TITLE:
Households’ Willingness-to-Pay for Wastewater Treatment in Traditional Agro-Food Processing Villages, Nhue-Day River Basin, Vietnam: Case Study in Hanoi City
AUTHORS:
Tran Thi Thu Trang, Roberto F. Rañola, Nguyen Van Song
KEYWORDS:
Wastewater Treatment, Willingness-to-Pay, Craft Villages, Choice Experiment, Conditional Logit Model, Random Parameter Logit Model
JOURNAL NAME:
Journal of Environmental Protection,
Vol.9 No.10,
September
5,
2018
ABSTRACT: Despite the number of studies focusing on the financial
analysis of production activities, conducting on technical solutions, and improving
water quality, no study has been conducted on the application of economic instruments
that apply to water quality management in craft villages, and several studies of
WTP also. This study aimed to estimate the households’ willingness-to-pay for wastewater
treatment in selected traditional agro-food processing villages in Nhue-Day River
Basin, Vietnam. A pilot Choice Experiment (CE) technique in Choice Modelling (CM)
approach was applied for this study with 267 selected agro-food processing households
by using the conditional logit (CL) and random parameter logit (RPL) models. The
results showed that total annual environmental fee for wastewater treatment from
agro-food processing households is estimated as 1089 million VND (equal to US$47,868
per year) for the total of 902 agro-food processing households in three research
sites in Nhue-Day River Basin. This estimated budget for wastewater treatment accounted
for 55.85% of total annual operation and maintenance costs only. In addition, the
technology is improved to enable 90% of treated wastewater. Overall, the results
of this study suggest the new wastewater treatment plant construction and improved
wastewater collection system by increasing the investment in order to improve the
water quality in Nhue-Day River Basin that brings about the reducing environmental
degradation, biodiversity loss and human health risks.