Determinants of the marginal willingness to pay for improved domestic water and irrigation in partially electrified Rwandan villages

ABSTRACT

Access to water for domestic and irrigation uses remains limited across Sub-Saharan Africa, particularly in rural areas. While the technical feasibility of implementing innovative technologies to improve water supply has been often evaluated, less is known about the drivers that motivate users to pay for obtaining the inherent benefits of improved water supply. In this article, the determinants of the marginal willingness to pay (mWTP) for improved domestic and irrigation water are investigated. For this purpose, a contingent valuation study is performed in rural Rwanda. This study uses survey data from 316 households situated in 8 villages, in which ~20% of the households receive electricity thanks to microgrids powered by solar energy. It is found that the mWTP for improved domestic water supply is influenced by the proportion of children in the household, business ownership, and satisfaction with water quantity and quality. The mWTP for irrigation is determined by respondent education, business ownership and crop area planted. This paper contributes to the literature by allowing a comparison of the determinants of the mWTP for improved domestic water supply to the determinants of the mWTP for irrigation. Another contribution is to examine the mWTP for improved water infrastructure in partially electrified villages. Identifying areas with high marginal benefits from water can guide infrastructure investment and electrification efforts while improving well-being and increasing revenues in rural areas.

KEYWORDS:

• domestic water
• irrigation
• electricity access
• contingent valuation
• willingness to pay
• Rwanda

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank the surveyors for their high quality work and the surveyees for answering our questions. Finally, we would like to thank our partner electricity provider, the company MeshPower, for collaborating on this research. We would like to thank the anonymous reviewers and the editor for their comments and suggestions which allowed us to improve the article.

Data availability statement

An anonymized version of the survey variables used in this analysis can be made available upon request.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. 9 villages were in fact surveyed but one is not considered due to its relatively large size and lack of representativeness for typical rural villages.

2. The ‘villagisation’ policy (umudugudu) started in 1994, after the genocide, to settle returnees. Households were grouped into dense villages.

Additional information

Funding

This work is supported by a public grant overseen by the French National research Agency (ANR) as part of the “Investissement d’Avenir” program, through the “IDI 2015” project funded by the IDEX Paris-Saclay, ANR-11-IDEX0003-02.