Application of CVM method in the evaluation of flood control and water and sewage management projects

Abstract

Traditional methods of economic evaluation of projects in the field of environmental protection do not reflect the full value of these projects. In particular, it doesn’t take into account non-market effects that have an impact on the level of social welfare. The issue of valuation of natural resources and related services is also related to this problem. The evaluations and valuations of areas generally ignored the value of natural resources or take into account only the part which has the market value. The article presents the results of study the economy of non-market goods using contingent valuation method. The first part of the results concerns the willingness to pay for improvement of safety sense from flood risk. The second part concerns willingness to pay for the use of municipal sewage treatment plants. The population living of the area of the Żuławy of Vistula delta valued their improvement of safety sense from flood risk of at more than twice the value of the compared to current expenditures incurred flood protection. The vast majority of respondents considered it reasonable protection of polder areas. Indicating simultaneously that in the reduction of flood risk allows possible resettlement and restoration polder parts. The majority of residents (98%) agreed to the construction of wastewater treatment plants and were willing to pay for its construction and operation. The majority of respondents (especially those in middle age and older) found that the collective sewage development would contribute to improving the environment quality and thus the residents living standard. However, not all were willing to pay for the use of collective sewage collection and treatment. 18% of respondents did not want to pay an amount greater than the current charges for the sewage removal and treatment. In addition, the residents of the municipality cannot afford to pay, or believe that water supply and sanitation services should be free.

Willingness to Pay for Recreational Benefit Evaluation in a Wastewater Reuse Project. Analysis of a Case Study

“…or an upper secondary (high) school diploma have a similar distribution of WTP. These results are in agreement with those reported by [12,17,18]. As expected, full time workers declare a higher WTP than the other groups ( Figure 11): on average 52 € against 35 € for unemployed, 40 € for retired people, and 42 € for full time students.…”

“…Another interesting result is that respondents belonging to the 72-76 group are always willing to provide a contribution of between 20 and 100 €. A comparison with the results by [18] shows that differences occur among the age intervals and the highest values of WTP are associated to the central intervals (middle age). Based on the distribution of the families among the four districts and the average WTP found for each district, it emerged that the average WTP (ML-WTP, according to Equation (1)) for the municipality is equal to 48.10 € and the median WTP corresponds to 40 € (one-off payment).…”

“…A rapid glimpse at Figure 10 shows that WTP seems to be related to the respondent's education level, as remarked in [12,17,18]. Respondents with a university degree express a familial WTP on average of 65 € and their corresponding variability range is the widest compared to the others, with the upper limit equal to 500 €.…”

“…As remarked by Tziakis et al [10], the construction/upgrade of a wastewater treatment plant must be "approved of" by the residents, who should also be willing to pay for its construction and operation.In this context, in order to evaluate the economic feasibility of the projects, the contingent valuation method (CVM) can be effectively used to enhance the non-market benefits associated with this type of project, for example for recreational and landscape benefits, in order to estimate the total economic value of the investments. It allows the value of non-market goods and services to be determined and is the most widely-used method in evaluating environmental assets by surveying people's willingness to pay for such an asset and/or what they would be willing to receive by way of compensation in order to tolerate such a cost; i.e., preservation of a natural park, or the upgrade of a wastewater treatment plant [11].Numerous studies have been published dealing with the application of CVM in different parts of the world in the case of reclaimed water reuse projects [10,[12][13][14][15][16], sustainable drainage systems and flood risk reduction [17,18], improvement in the surface water quality for nutrient reduction [19], improvement of the water quality used for irrigation needs [20], for coastal water depollution [21], and finally, for tap water quality improvement [22]. Details of these studies are reported in Table 1, together with their aims and main results.…”

“…Numerous studies have been published dealing with the application of CVM in different parts of the world in the case of reclaimed water reuse projects [10,[12][13][14][15][16], sustainable drainage systems and flood risk reduction [17,18], improvement in the surface water quality for nutrient reduction [19], improvement of the water quality used for irrigation needs [20], for coastal water depollution [21], and finally, for tap water quality improvement [22]. Details of these studies are reported in Table 1, together with their aims and main results.…”