Abstract
Despite increasing availability of household water treatment products, demand in developing countries remains low. Willingness to pay for water treatment products and factors that affect demand are not well understood. In this study, we estimate willingness to pay for WaterGuard, a dilute chlorine solution for point-of-use water treatment, using actual purchase decisions at randomly assigned prices. Secondly, we identify household characteristics that are correlated with the purchase decision. Among a sample of 854 respondents from 107 villages in rural Kenya, we find that mean willingness to pay is approximately 80% of the market price. Although only 35% of sample households purchased WaterGuard at the market price, 67% of those offered a 50% discount purchased the product. A marketing message emphasizing child health did not have a significant effect on purchase behavior, overall or among the subset of households with children under five. These findings suggest that rural Kenyans are willing to pay for WaterGuard at low prices but are very sensitive to increasing price. Households with young children that could benefit the most from use of WaterGuard do not appear to be more likely to purchase the product, and a marketing message designed to target this population was ineffective.
Highlights
Diarrheal disease, due in large part to the consumption of contaminated water, is the second leading infectious cause of death in children under five [1,2]
This study used randomly assigned prices and real purchase decisions to estimate average willingness to pay (WTP) for WaterGuard and identify characteristics associated with demand in rural Kenya
Similar to Ashraf et al [8] and Kremer et al [10], we find that respondents are willing to pay for WaterGuard at prices below the market price, but they are highly price sensitive
Summary
Due in large part to the consumption of contaminated water, is the second leading infectious cause of death in children under five [1,2]. Much of the literature on demand for improved water quality relies on stated preference methods in which respondents are asked hypothetical questions about their WTP for a good. We identify factors affecting demand based on household characteristics correlated with WaterGuard purchase decisions, and test the relative impacts of marketing messages designed to emphasize the importance of water treatment for child versus adult health. The paper is organized as follows: we explain the methods, including the study site and details of the water treatment product and purchase offer; in the third section we describe the study population and provide results on purchases, average WTP, household characteristics correlated with purchase decisions, and the effects of the child health marketing message; the conclusion section summarizes the key findings and places this study in the context of the larger literature
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