Households’ Willingness to Pay for Disaster Resilient Safe Drinking Water Sources in Southwestern Coastal Bangladesh

Nonfunctionality of engineered water sources after two catastrophic cyclones—Sidr in November 2007 and Aila in May 2009—created acute scarcity of safe drinking water in coastal Bangladesh.The objective of this study was to estimate households’willingness to pay(WTP)for disaster resilient water sources in Dacope upazila of Khulna District in southwestern coastal Bangladesh.By applying the double bounded dichotomous contingent valuation method to a dataset of 250 randomly selected households,we found that the mean WTP is BDT 263 and that inaccessibility to functional safe drinking water sources is the most significant determining factor of households’WTP.Projecting mean WTP for a disaster resilient water source project in the study area,we measured a present value of aggregate WTP over project’s life span worth about BDT 624(USD 7.37)million,which is about14.30 times the present value of project’s aggregate establishment and maintenance cost.However,charging the local inhabitants a water tariff at mean WTP would lead to the exclusion of around 50%of the people from getting access to the improved water services or create a free riding problem.Through simulation exercises this study determined that the socially optimal water tariff is BDT 50 per month.This tariff would not only generate revenue of more than five times the project cost but would also create access to disaster resilient improved drinking water sources for almost 99%of the people.

Can Strategies to Cope with Hazard Shocks be Explained by At-Risk Households' Socioeconomic Asset Profile? Evidence from Tropical Cyclon-Prone Coastal Bangladesh

This article documents the results of an empirical investigation on the complex interplay between diverse coping mechanisms and the socioeconomic asset profiles of coastal households at risk. Focusing on household-level perceptions and responses to cyclone hazards, a case study was carried out in a poor area in Bangladesh that is prone to natural hazards. We developed and tested our own analytical models based on the asset approach. We conducted a face-to-face household survey in southwestern coastal Bangladesh, in the Koyra sub-district, in late 2009.We asked 360 households affected by the May 2009 tropical Cyclone Aila about their hazard perceptions, preparedness, coping practices, and socioeconomic assets. The results suggest that the majority of households at risk perceive an increasing trend of different climate hazards,with a distinct dominance of tropical cyclones, storm surges, and flash floods in the study area, which resulted in a yearly average economic damage of USD 144 for each household in the first year after Aila. However, such damage is significantly and inversely correlated with the number of adopted coping practices. Significant and systematic differences exist between upstream and downstream households in the study area with respect to hazard perception, hazard induced damages, asset accessibility,and adopted diversified coping practices. The empirical findings suggest that the degree of adoption of coping practices depends primarily on elements of socioeconomic asset profile and the duration of the consequences of cyclone hazards. Disaster preparedness training seems to improve at-risk households' degree of information access and eventually leads them to adopt more coping practices to reduce adverse impacts of climate hazards. Area-specific practical modules on coping practices should be incorporated in curricula of disaster preparedness training to make people at risk more resilient to hazard shocks.