4. MARCO INTERPRETATIVO
4.1 EMOCIONES DE LOS PROFESIONALES DE ENFERMERIA
or the payment card or checklist contingent valuation method (in which the respondent is asked to indicate the maximum amount
s/he would be willing to pay from a ordered set of values, ranging from zero to ‘Rs X or more’ per month for the good).51
Several variants of the payment card method are in use, including the recent ‘payment ladder’ method.52 From an ordered set of values (payments), the respondent indicates the amounts that s/he would definitely pay (ticks) and the amounts that s/he would definitely not pay (crosses). The advantage of this approach is that
49 For a discussion on the contingent valuation method, see R. Mitchell and R. Carson, Using Surveys to Value Public Goods: The Contingent Valuation Method. Washington, D.C.:
Resources for the Future, 1989. See also, R.T. Carson, N.E. Flores, and N.F. Meade. ‘Contingent Valuation: Controversies and Evidence.’ Environmental and Resource
Economics, 19:173–210, 2001; R.C. Mitchell, ‘On Designing Constructed Markets in
Valuation Studies,’ Environmental and Resource Economics, 22:297–321, 2002.
50 See, for instance, J. Ahmad, B. Goldar, S. Misra, and M. Jakariya, Fighting arsenic, listening to rural communities: Willingness to pay for arsenic-free, safe drinking water in rural Bangladesh, New Delhi, Water and Sanitation Program, 2003; Gloria Soto Montes de
Oca, Ian J. Bateman, Robert Tinch, and Peter G. Moffatt, ‘Assessing the willingness to pay for maintained and improved water supplies in Mexico city,’ CSERGE Working Paper ECM 03–11, 2003; James F. Casey, James R. Kahn, and Alexandre Rivas, ‘Willingness to pay for improved water service in Manaus, Amazonas, Brazil,’ Ecological
Economics, 58(2), 365–372, 2006; R.V Raje, P.S. Dhobe, and A.W. Deshpande,
‘Consumer’s willingness to pay more for municipal supplied water: A case study,’
Ecological Economics 42(3): 391–400, 2002; Dale Whittington, S.K. Pattanayak, J. Yang,
and K.C. Bal Kumar, ‘Household demand for improved piped water services: Evidence from Kathmandu, Nepal,’ Water Policy, 4: 531–556, 2002.
51 The open-ended elicitation method (where the respondent is asked to state the sum
s/he would be willing to pay for the good being valued), which was widely used at one time has now fallen out of the favor of researchers due to its shortcomings, particularly the elicited values being affected by hypothetical bias and strategic bias.
52 Some of the studies that have used the payment ladder approach are Nick Hanley
and Bengt Kristrom, ‘What’s it worth? Exploring value uncertainty using interval questions in Contingent Valuation’, Working Paper, Department of Economics, University of Glasgow, 2002; B. Day, N. Hanley, and O. Bergland, ‘Non-parametric and semi-parametric approaches to analyzing payment ladder contingent valuation data: bathing water quality improvements in Scotland’, Working paper, Economics Department, University of Glasgow, 2001; Bruce Horton, Giordano Colarullo, Ian Bateman, and Carlos Peres, ‘Evaluating non-users willingness to pay for the implementation of a proposed national parks program in Amazonia: a UK/Italian contingent valuation study’, CSERGE Working Paper ECM 02–01, 2002.
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Using a simple payment card method for handpump users allows for several service improvement options, including a switch to piped water systems and add-on facilities with the existing handpumps
it recognizes the stochastic nature of household willingness to pay, that is, there is a probability distribution of the amount that the respondent would be willing to pay for a given good or service. For this study two formats have been used—payment card and payment ladder. The payment card format has been used to elicit the respondent’s
willingness to pay for improved services of a handpump, while the payment ladder format has been used in the study to elicit the respondent’s willingness to pay for improved piped water supply. Using a simple payment card method for handpump users allows for several service improvement options, including a switch to piped water systems and add-on facilities (such as a fluoride filter) with the existing handpumps. The closed-ended format was not favored for this study because for a proper administration of the closed-ended format it needs to be coupled with split sampling (that is, quoting different payment levels in different sub-samples). It was felt that given the large size of the questionnaire (and the wide range of issues on which information was being collected), the closed-ended format with split sampling would be difficult to administer. Also, in the setting of rural India, a question on whether or not the household will be willing to pay a specified amount for water supply (often viewed by villagers as a responsibility of the state government) would not have a favorable
response from the respondent, who in all likelihood would be more comfortable with the question on how much at the most can s/he pay for an improved water supply.
Payment Cards
Before asking the questions on consumer willingness to pay for improved services, the household was asked (the respondent was often the head of the household; male in almost all cases) questions on whether he was satisfied with the current arrangements for water supply. Only the households that reported dissatisfaction with services were asked about their willingness to pay for improved services. The improved scenario was explained and the payment card was presented.
The improved scenarios and the structure of payment card differed between piped water users and handpump users. The specification of the improved scenario and the structure of the payment card also differed between Uttar Pradesh, which was the first to study, and other states. Having gained experience from the Uttar Pradesh study (the first state to be analyzed), the specification of scenarios and payment cards were later modified.
For piped water users, the improved scenario was specified as better operation and maintenance of the infrastructure or replacement of the existing scheme by a new, better functioning scheme. In both cases, the respondent was to get better services in terms of more water, longer hours of supply, regular supply, and so on. The capital cost contribution that the responding household