Discontentment with a piped supply system of drinking water has become a significant concern in Bangladesh's urban areas in recent years, necessitating the improvement of different aspects of the system in question. Therefore, by conducting a discrete choice experiment on 115 households out of a systematically selected 161 households, this study aims to estimate the willingness to pay (WTP) for an improved safe drinking water supply by considering the trade-offs made by urban dwellers for the proposed improvements to an existing water supply system in the Khulna City Corporation (KCC) area of Bangladesh. The primary results show that the total WTP of households is estimated at BDT 243.6 (≈US$ 2.87) per month, implying that respondents are ready to pay for improvements to the water supply attributes of water quality, regularity of supply, water pressure in taps, and filtering. A revenue stream for an improved water supply system is also being developed, suggesting that investment in improving the system would be a ‘no-regret’ decision and economically sustainable.

This study estimates health cost of salinity contamination in drinking water in the severe salinity affected three south-western districts of Bangladesh. We collected information on self-reported health status, household characteristics, and laboratory-tested salinity concentration in drinking water from randomly selected 266 households. Our findings show that an increase in the concentration of 100 mg sodium chloride per litre in the drinking water raises annual health cost BDT 262 (USD 3.28) per household, all other things being equal. For average salinity concentration (868.26 mg L −1 ), we computed gross annual health cost per household BDT 2270 (USD 28.38). Limiting salt concentration at the safe level could save approximately BDT 1617 (USD 20) per household or BDT 170 (USD 2.12) million in aggregate annually, which accounts for almost 1% of their disposable income. A benefit-cost analysis shows that net present value of benefits from a 10-year project for supplying safe drinking water to the entire population is around USD 7.33 million, and thus, the study indicates financial viability of alternative supply system (pond sand filtering) to the concerned authorities.