Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-jn8rn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T15:30:49.692Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Awareness and the demand for environmental quality: survey evidence on drinking water in urban India*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 March 2009

JYOTSNA JALAN ,
E. SOMANATHAN  and
SARASWATA CHAUDHURI
JYOTSNA JALAN
Affiliation:
Centre for Studies in Social Sciences Calcutta, R1 Baishnabghata Patuli Township, Kolkata-700094, INDIA. Tel: (91)(33)2462-5794/5795/7252. Fax: (91)(33)24626183. Email: [email protected], [email protected]
E. SOMANATHAN
Affiliation:
Planning Unit, Indian Statistical Institute, Delhi, India
SARASWATA CHAUDHURI
Affiliation:
Department of Economics, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, USA
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The demand for environmental quality is often presumed to be low in developing countries due to poverty. Less attention has been paid to the possibility that lack of awareness about adverse health effects of environmental pollution could also keep the demand low. We use a household survey from urban India to estimate the effects of schooling, exposure to mass media, and other measures of awareness on home water purification. We find that these measures of awareness have statistically significant effects on home purification and, therefore, on willingness to pay. These effects are similar in magnitude to the wealth effects. Average costs of different home purification methods are used to generate partial estimates of willingness to pay for better drinking water quality.

Type
Research Article
Information
Environment and Development Economics , Volume 14 , Issue 6 , December 2009 , pp. 665 - 692
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2009

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Abrahams, N.A., Hubbell, B.J., and Jordan, J.L. (2000), ‘Joint production and averting expenditure measures of willingness to pay: do water expenditures really measure avoidance costs?’, American Journal of Agricultural Economics 82: 427–437.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Alberini, A., Eskeland, G.S., Krupnick, A., and McGranahan, G. (1996), ‘Determinants of diarrheal disease in Jakarta’, Water Resources Research 32: 2259–2269.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Borghi, J., Guinness, L., Ouedraogo, J., and Curtis, V. (2002), ‘Is hygiene promotion cost effective? A case study in Burkina Faso’, Tropical Medicine and International Health 7: 960–969.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Boyce, J.K., Klemer, A.R., Templet, P.H., and Willis, C.E. (1999), ‘Power distribution, the environment, and public health: a state-level analysis’, Ecological Economics 29: 127–140.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brooks, N. and Sethi, R. (1997), ‘The distribution of pollution: community characteristics and exposure to air toxics’, Journal of Environmental Economics and Management 32: 233–251.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cairncross, S., Shordt, K., Zacharia, S., and Govindan, B.K. (2005), ‘What causes sustainable changes in hygiene behaviour? A cross-sectional study from Kerala, India’, Social Science and Medicine 61: 2212–2220.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Colwell, R.R. et al. (2003), ‘Reduction of cholera in Bangladeshi villages by simple filtration’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA 100: 1051–1055.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Courant, P.N. and Porter, R.C. (1981), ‘Averting expenditure and the cost of pollution’, Journal of Environmental Economics and Management 8: 321–329.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Curtis, V., Kanki, B., Mertens, T., Traoré, E., Diallo, I., Tall, F., and Cousens, S. (1995), ‘Potties, pits and pipes: explaining hygiene behaviour in Burkina Faso’, Social Science and Medicine 41: 383–393.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Curtis, V. and Cairncross, S. (2003), ‘Effect of washing hands with soap on diarrhoea risk in the community: a systematic review’, The Lancet Infectious Diseases 3: 275–281.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Dasgupta, P. (2004), ‘Valuing health damages from water pollution in urban Delhi, India: a health production function approach’, Environment and Development Economics 9: 83–106.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Farrell, P. and Fuchs, V.R. (1982), ‘Schooling and health: the cigarette connection’, Journal of Health Economics 1: 217–230.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Filmer, D. and Pritchett, L. (2001), ‘Estimating wealth effects without expenditure data or tears: with an application to educational enrollments in states of India’, Demography 38: 115–132.Google ScholarPubMed
Grossman, M. (1976), ‘The correlation between health and schooling’, in Terleckyj, N.E. (ed.), Household Production and Consumption, New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Harrington, W. and Portney, P.R. (1987), ‘Valuing the benefits of health and safety regulation’, Journal of Urban Economics 22: 101–112.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hausman, J. and McFadden, D. (1984), ‘A specification test for the multinomial logit model’, Econometrica 52: 1219–1240.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
International Institute of Population Sciences (IIPS) and ORC Macro (2000), National Family Health Survey (NFHS-2), 1998–99: India, Mumbai, India.Google Scholar
Jalan, J. and Ravallion, M. (2003), ‘Does piped water reduce diarrhea for children in rural India?’, Journal of Econometrics 112: 153–173.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jalan, J. and Somanathan, E. (2008), ‘The importance of being informed: experimental evidence on demand for environmental quality’, Journal of Development Economics 87: 14–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kenkel, D. (1991), ‘Health behavior, health knowledge, and schooling’, Journal of Political Economy 99: 287–305.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kolstad, C.D. (2000), Environmental Economics, New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
McConnell, K.E. and Rosado, M.A. (2000) ‘Valuing discrete improvements in drinking water quality through revealed preferences’, Water Resources Research 36: 1575–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
National Sample Survey Organisation (1999) Household Consumer Expenditure and Employment Situation in India: NSS 54th Round, New Delhi: Government of India.Google Scholar
Pargal, S. and Wheeler, D. (1996) ‘Informal regulation of industrial pollution in developing countries: evidence from Indonesia’, The Journal of Political Economy 104: 1314–1327.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Parikh, K.S., Parikh, J., and Raghu Ram, T.L. (1999), ‘Air and water quality management: new initiatives needed’, in Parikh, K.S. (ed.), India Development Report, New Delhi: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Pattanayak, S.K., Yang, J., Whittington, D., and Balkumar, K.C. (2005), ‘Coping with unreliable public water supplies: averting expenditures by households in Kathmandu, Nepal’, Water Resources Research 41: 1–11.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Quick, R., Mintz, E., Sobel, J., Mead, P., Reiff, F., and Tauxe, R. (1997), ‘A new strategy for waterborne disease prevention’, 23rd WEDC Conference Durban, South Africa.Google Scholar
Rosenzweig, M. and Paul Schultz, T. (1983), ‘Estimating a household production function: heterogeneity, the demand for health inputs, and their effects on birth weight’, Journal of Political Economy 91: 723–746.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Roy, J., Chattopadhyay, S., Mukherjee, S., Kanjilal, M., Samajpati, S., and Roy, S. (2004), ‘An economic analysis of demand for water quality: case of Kolkata’, Economic and Political Weekly 39: 186–193.Google Scholar
Sen, A. and Himanshu, (2004), ‘Poverty and inequality in India –I’, Economic and Political Weekly, 18: 4247–4263.Google Scholar
Small, K.A. and Hsiao, C. (1985), ‘Multinomial logit specification tests’, International Economic Review 26: 619–627.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smith, R.J. and Blundell, R.W. (1986), ‘An exogeneity test for a simultaneous equation Tobit model with application to labor supply’, Econometrica 54: 679–86.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Strina, A., Cairncross, S., Barreto, M.L., Larrea, C., and Prado, M.S. (2003), ‘Childhood diarrhea and observed hygiene behaviour in Salvador, Brazil’, American Journal of Epidemiology 157: 1032–1038.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
World Health Organization (2002), The World Health Report 2002, Geneva: Switzerland.Google Scholar