TITLE:
Evaluation of Public Weather Services by Users in the Formal Services Sector in Accra, Ghana
AUTHORS:
Kwabena Asomanin Anaman, Ruth Quaye, Evelyn Amankwah
KEYWORDS:
Contingent Valuation, Environmental Economics, Ghana, Ghana Meteorological Agency, Meteorological Services, Public Weather Services, Resource Economics
JOURNAL NAME:
Modern Economy,
Vol.8 No.7,
July
26,
2017
ABSTRACT: We undertook a study that
evaluated the public weather services used by people working in the formal
services sector of the Ghana based in Accra, the capital city of Ghana. The
study employed randomly-sampling survey technique to request information from 102
respondents on their use of services and information produced by the Ghana
Meteorological Agency (GMet), the country’s official producer and archival of
meteorological data, information, products and services. The results of the
analysis of survey data indicated that virtually all the respondents used
public weather services produced by GMet. The users generally considered the
quality of the public weather services to be of moderate quality. Using the
contingent valuation method to ascertain the economic value of public weather
services, 87.7% of the respondents were prepared to pay for the public weather
services rather than be without them. The average WTP per person
per month was 16.67 Ghana cedis per month or 200.04 Ghana cedis per year or
51.96 United States dollars per year.
The aggregate economic value, based on only the users of public weather services
in the formal services sector of Accra, who constitute just about 2.1% of the
total work force of Ghana, is over four times the value of the annual budget provided by the
Government of Ghana to GMet in 2016. Users in the formal services sector wanted GMet to produce more locality-specific weather forecasts
and services with advance warning times. Further the information from the
Agency needs to be distributed and publicised by the mass media through radio
and television including the emerging and fast growing local language-based
mass media on hourly basis rather than the current system where they are
supplied to the general public once a day via the evening television news
through the English-language radio and TV channels.