The Impact of Conditional Cash Transfer on Toilet Use in eThekwini, South Africa

Abstract

Abstract:In the developing world, having access to a toilet does not necessarily imply use: infrequent or non-use limits the desired health outcomes of improved sanitation. We examine the sanitation situation in a rural part of South Africa where recipients of novel, waterless "urine-diverting dry toilets" are not regularly using them. In order to determine if small, conditional cash transfers (CCT) could motivate families to use their toilets more, we paid for urine via different incentive-based interventions: two were based on volumetric pricing and the third was a flat-rate payment (irrespective of volume). A flat-rate payment (approx. €1) resulted in the highest rates of regular (weekly) participation at 59%. The low volumetric payment (approx. €0.05/L) led to regular participation rates of only 12% and no increase in toilet use. The high volumetric payment (approx. €0.1/L) resulted in lower rates of regular participation (35%), but increased the average urine production per household per day by 74%. As a first example of conditional cash transfers being used in the sanitation sector, we show that they are an accepted and effective tool for increasing toilet use, while putting small cash payments in the hands of poor, largely unemployed populations in rural South Africa.

The effect of giving respondents time to think in a choice experiment: a conditional cash transfer programme in South Africa

“…Following the CE, we implemented actual CCT interventions in three of the six communities that took part in the CE. Interventions were different in each of the areas; details about each can be found in Tilley, (2015). We focus on the results from one area (referred to in the appendix as Area 6).…”

Why do We Know So Much and Yet So Little? A Scoping Review of Willingness to Pay for Human Excreta Derived Material in Agriculture

“…The studies used different elicitation methods, which may potentially lead to different conclusions. The choice of the correct elicitation method between CVM and CE has raised debate over the past few decades [147][148][149][150]. The models used in the analysis may also differ depending on the type of data and research objectives.…”

“…The models used in the analysis may also differ depending on the type of data and research objectives. While the CVM estimates the WTP of moving from one holistic non-marketed good to a new alternative by altering the attributes, CE approaches attach the value of individual attributes by providing different options, altering the number of attributes and levels within each bundle which is not possible in CVM [149]. Moreover, including the price attribute in different choice sets helps to estimate how much value people attach to each attribute level [149].…”

“…While the CVM estimates the WTP of moving from one holistic non-marketed good to a new alternative by altering the attributes, CE approaches attach the value of individual attributes by providing different options, altering the number of attributes and levels within each bundle which is not possible in CVM [149]. Moreover, including the price attribute in different choice sets helps to estimate how much value people attach to each attribute level [149]. However, the use of CVM to elicit WTP has been found to have a practical advantage of reducing cognitive burden primarily where a large number of attributes and levels are used to achieve design efficiency, which is often the case with most CE methods [151].…”

Willingness to Pay for Improved Household Solid Waste Collection in Blantyre, Malawi

“…Although stated preference methods can provide results that are exaggerated up or down (Bateman et al 2001;Hensher 2010), there is limited, but growing evidence to show that preferences obtained through valuation are useful in revealing an individual's perceptions towards policies that have not yet been implemented (Tilley and Günther 2016). In the environmental sanitation sector, some work has used stated preference methods for solid waste (Czajkowski et al 2014) however, across all disciplines there are few examples of stated preferences being validated against revealed preferences, partly because few of the tested scenarios are implemented, or because they are too abstract to do so.…”