TECHNICAL PAPERS
Nov 1, 2006

Derived Willingness-to-Pay for Household Water Use with Price and Probabilistic Supply

Publication: Journal of Water Resources Planning and Management
Volume 132, Issue 6

Abstract

Stochastic optimization is used to estimate the willingness-to-pay (WTP) of individual households and groups of households for changes in a combination of probabilistic water supply reliability and retail price of water. By modeling the financial and “perceived” costs of implementing long- and short-term conservation options and assuming rational (expected value cost minimizing) behavior, economic demand curves for water and expected water use can be estimated for a household. Monte Carlo-simulation techniques are used to represent variability in the household model parameters and derive estimates of aggregate household WTP for water supply reliability, and demand curves for water and conservation measures. Examples are provided to illustrate the approach.

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Acknowledgments

Richard Howitt and several anonymous reviewers are thanked for comments and suggestions on earlier drafts of this work.

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Information & Authors

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Published In

Go to Journal of Water Resources Planning and Management
Journal of Water Resources Planning and Management
Volume 132Issue 6November 2006
Pages: 424 - 433

History

Received: Sep 15, 2004
Accepted: Nov 14, 2005
Published online: Nov 1, 2006
Published in print: Nov 2006

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Authors

Affiliations

Roberto Garcia Alcubilla
Engineer, 17 rue St. Bernard, 75011 Paris, France.
Jay R. Lund [email protected]
Professor, Dept. of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Univ. of California–Davis, Davis, CA 95616-8628. E-mail: [email protected]

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