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Awareness and Demand for Environmental Quality E. Somanathan Indian Statistical Institute, Delhi

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1. Survey Evidence on Drinking Water Quality in India. J. Jalan, E. Somanathan and S. Chaudhuri ... Provision of pure drinking water reduces waterborne disease. ... – PowerPoint PPT presentation

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Title: Awareness and Demand for Environmental Quality E. Somanathan Indian Statistical Institute, Delhi


1
Awareness and Demand for Environmental
QualityE. SomanathanIndian Statistical
Institute, Delhi
  • 1. Survey Evidence on Drinking Water Quality in
    India
  • J. Jalan, E. Somanathan and S. Chaudhuri
  • 2. Experimental Evidence on the Importance of
    Being Informed
  • J. Jalan and E. Somanathan

2
  • 1.7 million deaths and 54 million disability
    adjusted life years lost annually due to unsafe
    water, sanitation and hygiene. 90 percent of the
    deaths are those of children WHO, 2002
  • Provision of pure drinking water reduces
    waterborne disease.
  • This has been known for a long time

3
  • But cities in many developing countries such as
    India still lack purified 24-hour water supply
    systems.
  • Part of the reason is that people are unwilling
    to pay the higher water charges needed to finance
    improvements and so there is insufficient
    expressed public demand for improved water supply
    systems.

4
  • Partly the lack of demand for a safer water
    supply is due to low incomes. But lack of
    awareness and information about the poor quality
    of the existing supply may play a role.
  • This research investigates the role of
    information in generating demand for better water
    quality.

5
  • If awareness does have a significant effect on
    willingness to pay for better water quality, then
    we would expect more educated people, (who are
    presumably more aware of water quality issues),
    to be spending more on home purification.
  • We use the 1998-99 urban subsample of the
    National Family Health Survey to see if this is
    the case.

6
  • Sample size 20,000 households
  • Sampled households highly exposed to waterborne
    diseases 16.5 percent of households with
    children in the 0-3 age group had at least one
    case of diarrhea in the two weeks preceding the
    survey. Sample size 20,000 households
  • Sampled households highly exposed to waterborne
    diseases

7

8
To filter or not? A simple binary choice model
9
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10
  • Moving to our study area
  • Urban Gurgaon (a suburb of Delhi, the capital of
    India) is quite wealthy by Indian standards

11
Percent owning a..
12
The level of schooling is high
  • Mean schooling level of most educated male member
    of household is grade 12
  • Mean schooling level of most educated female
    member of household is grade 11
  • And the media do report water and health issues

13
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14
And yet awareness about waterborne disease is low
15
  • As we just saw, awareness spreads slowly by
    conventional means
  • Is there a role for provision of immediately
    relevant information?
  • How much does more information (compared to more
    wealth or more schooling) raise demand for water
    quality?

16
The experiment
  • 1st round 1000 randomly chosen (under-sampled
    top and bottom of wealth distribution) Gurgaon
    households surveyed in Nov-Dec 2003. Water
    samples taken of unpurified drinking water and
    purified drinking water if any.
  • Roughly half randomly chosen as treatment group,
    others in control group.

17
2nd round (mid-January 2004)
  • Treatment group given results dirty (probably
    contaminated with germs) or clean (probably not
    contaminated).
  • And handout explaining the water purification
    methods in use in Gurgaon, brief description of
    their effectiveness and cost.

18
3rd round in March
  • All (treatment and control) households
    re-surveyed to see if they had changed their
    water purification behavior.

19
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20
  • How does the treatment affect the behaviour of
    those not initially purifying?
  • Does the treatment effect depend on wealth or
    awareness?
  • ?y a ß1dirty ß2clean ß3dirtywu
    ß4dirtyau u
  • Linearity not assumed. All dummy variables.

21
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22
  • The 11 percentage point effect of this single
    dose of targeted information on frequency of
    purification compares with
  • 4.4 percentage point effect of an additional year
    of education of head of household,
  • 15 percentage point effect of move from one
    wealth quartile to the next.

23
  • Similar results hold when we look at annual
    expenditure instead of purification.
  • There is an increase of Rs 45 in household
    expenditure on purification in response to a
    dirty result (for households not initially
    purifying).
  • By way of comparison, the mean expenditure of all
    households in the sample was Rs 253 and the dirty
    result raises it by 10 percent.

24
  • Among households that received a dirty result,
    wealthy households are 17 percentage points more
    likely to start purifying.
  • Those below median wealth (approx. 0) are not
    significantly different from the control group.

25
Educated households are also more likely to
purify in response to a positive result.
26
  • The response of more aware households to a dirty
    result is not significantly different from that
    of less aware households.

27
  • Looking at households that were initially
    purifying, we find that a clean result does not
    cause households to stop purifying significantly
    more often than control households. That is,
    there is no downgrading in response to a clean
    result.

28
Discussion
29
Conclusion
  • A dirty result from a 0.50 test raised the
    probability of purification by about 2.5 times as
    much as an additional year of schooling and 2/3
    as much as a move from one wealth quartile to the
    next.
  • The impact on expenditure is stronger for
    wealthier, more educated households, but not the
    impact on interest as measured by discussion.
  • Public education campaigns that include
    immediately relevant information can evidently
    make a significant impact on behavior and
    willingness to pay to avoid health risks.
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