Date Published:
Dec 1, 2006
Abstract:
Water-related diseases, particularly diarrhea in young children, kill two million people
annually. To address this problem, donors and governments often provide infrastructure such as
communal standpipes, wells, and protected springs in rural areas, where piping water into homes
is infeasible. We study the impact of source water quality improvements achieved via spring
protection in rural Kenya using a randomized evaluation. Spring protection leads to large
improvements in source water quality as measured by the fecal indicator bacteria
E. coli. Water
quality gains at the home are smaller on average, but this finding depends critically on
households’ water source choices. At households that only used the sample spring at baseline,
71% of the spring water quality benefits are translated into home water gains, suggesting that recontamination
in transport and storage may be less of a concern than is sometimes claimed.
Consistent with this view, the home water quality gains from spring protection are no larger for
households with better baseline sanitation or hygiene knowledge. Changes in household water
source choices after spring protection are used to derive revealed preference estimates of the
willingness to pay for improved water quality using a travel cost approach. The average
willingness to pay for the moderate gains in home water quality due to spring protection is at
least US$3.27 per household per year. We find no significant child health effects of spring
protection.
Notes:
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