International audienceUsing data from a household survey carried out in the French overseas territory of Réunion, we investigate the price of drinking-water perceived by households faced with an increasing, multi-step pricing scheme. To this purpose we use an improved version of the method introduced by Shin (1985) to estimate the demand for residential water when consumers are imperfectly informed about their pricing schedule. The empirical results suggest that Réunion households underestimate the price of water and thus consume more than what is economically rational. Providing information to households about the marginal price of water may be an innovative means of inducing them to respond to pricing policies designed to promote water conservation

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The aim of this paper is to present a practical manual prepared for the Department Public Health and Environment now Department for the Protection of the Human Environment of the World Health Organization (WHO) dealing with how to identify, collect, estimate and compare costs of the available technical options to provide access to safe drinking water in low-income communities. To cost an improved water supply technology, likely to secure access to safe drinking-water as defined by the WHO-UNICEF Joint Monitoring Programme for Water Supply and Sanitation, we rely on a bottom-up approach that disaggregates the technology process according to its essential components, singled out by an engineering description. Questionnaires have been developed to identify the main resources invested in a water supply project and to collect, at different disaggregation levels, four types of costs, namely: infrastructure, operation, maintenance and other relevant costs such as administration. Comparability of these different cost elements is achieved by discounting expenditures at different times to the same reference time. Eventually, full and unit cost indicators allowing least-cost analysis are derived from this cost-picture.

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