Payment Behaviour to Municipal Service Provision in Bangladesh

Abstract

The paper investigates the factors which are believed to influence the behaviour of households' willingness to pay for public services provided by municipal authorities in Bangladesh. The underlying concern of the analysis is a deeper understanding of the factors that are important for revenue mobilisation strategies in the municipalities of Bangladesh. The analysis is based on a survey of over six thousand households across all municipalities of Bangladesh, complemented with administrative data obtained from these local entities. A multinomial logit model is fitted. The model specification groups the household payment responses into three categories, i.e., willing to pay, reluctant to pay and opposed to paying the service charges while controlling for economic, social and demographic factors. The econometric model is estimated for each of three public services, i.e., water supply, solid waste management and street lighting facility, separately. The results indicate that household willingness to pay is significantly affected by factors such as service charge, income, education and the municipal classification. An important policy insight is that service charge increases and other factors noted above can be important in strategies for local revenue mobilisation.