Socio-economic and situational factors determining willingness to pay for improved water services: A survey of households in Bomet township

Abstract

Public utilities, which in most cases control distribution of water are often wanting of efficiency, accountability and equitability and so they deliver low-cost services to high income groups and low quality service, or no service to all the poor (UNDP, 2006). Existing water facilities are all too often falling into disrepair, demonstrating their lack of sustainability and making the danger of a slide backwards in the numbers of the served a real threat. For example, of the estimated 250,000 hand pumps in Africa, fewer than half are reckoned to be functional (HTN, 2003). Sustainability concerns are also more prominent and difficult to achieve in rural water supply with its water points (e.g. hand pumps), small scale systems and in urban areas where water supply is now increasingly organised on large scale with bigger systems operated by commercially oriented Water Services Providers (WSPs) and well trained professionals. To ensure sustainability of water projects the rural communities need to get involved in the planning process of these projects and must to be willing to pay for these services. Communities that pay for water services ensure full financial recovery of the projects and that sufficient funds are available for operation and maintenance. Willingness to pay studies enables an urban planner be able to involve the community by : establishing whether the water project is acceptable to the community or it is not, identifying the most preferred service level, establishing the proposed prices by the community, and most preferred sites for the water supply. The study set out to investigate socio-economic and situational factors as determining willingness to pay for improved water services. Rational choice theory and exchange theories governed the study; empirical investigation was carried out in Bomet Township community. This was because the town has an old water supply system which was built in 1957 for a population of 30 people and an ultimate population of 300 people. As a result this, water supply is not able to accommodate the raising demand for connection by residents of Bomet Township. The research design was cross-sectional using survey research from which a sample of 100 households was drawn randomly to give each household an equal chance of being selected from a sample frame of 200 registered households by Central Bureau of Statistics in Bomet. Analysis was carried out using SPSS. Chi-square test was used to test association between variables and willingness to pay while phi test was uses as a measure of that association. Key variables that had significant measure of association with household's willingness to pay for water were: lack of satisfaction with the current sources of water, past expenditure on water, storage of water in the house and household water consumption. The recommendation of the study is that the resident of Bomet Township are willing and able to pay for improved water service thus measures should be taken to expand and rehabilitate the old town water supply system to cater for the population increase and rising demand for water.