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Tag: water

Efficiency and equity in negotiated resource transfers: contributions and limitations of trust with limited contracts

Published January 2, 2011 by Alex Pfaff
Alexander Pfaff, Maria Alejandra Velez
Ecological Economics 74 (2012) 55–63

PDF link iconWe consider a case of water reallocation in Brazil, one which has numerous analogs elsewhere. To permit empirical study of the effects of institutions that can facilitate or restrict  allocations, we conducted field experiments to explore trust’s potential when resource contracts are limited, using a novel asymmetric-productivity ultimatum game with a final surplus-sharing step added. As a form of informal institution, trust could in principle make rights and contracts unnecessary. We observe whether trust in compensation is in fact expected and expressed. We also explore whether trust is exploited, and the effect of communication, within our two bargaining structures: (1) no communication; and (2) with a non-binding message concerning the surplus to be shared. We see that our participants both expect and express trust that some of the surplus will be shared. Trust raises total output and some surplus is indeed shared: those who trust gain a bit on average; and the more trust was shown, the more was shared. However, often the trust was barely repaid. Further, the messages—found to help in other research—had little impact and were often untrue. In sum, trust does matter but both efficiency and equity could well rise with complete contracts.

 

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Behavior, Environment, and Health in Developing Countries: evaluation and valuation

Published January 1, 2009 by Alex Pfaff
Subhrendu Pattanayak, Alexander Pfaff
Annual Review of Resource Economics (2009) 1:183–217

PDF link iconWe consider health and environmental quality in developing countries, where limited resources constrain behaviors that combat enormously burdensome health challenges. We focus on four huge challenges that are preventable (i.e., are resolved in rich countries). We distinguish them as special cases in a general model of household behavior, which is critical and depends on risk information. Simply informing households may achieve a lot in the simplest challenge (groundwater arsenic); yet, for the three infectious situations discussed (respiratory, diarrhea, and malaria), community coordination and public provision may also be necessary. More generally, social interactions may justify additional policies. For each situation, we discuss the valuation of private spillovers (i.e., externalities) and evaluation of public policies to reduce environmental risks and spillovers. Finally, we reflect on open questions in our model and knowledge gaps in the empirical literature including the challenges of scaling up and climate change.

 

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Can information alone change behavior? Response to arsenic contamination of groundwater in Bangladesh

Published January 8, 2007 by Alex Pfaff
Malgosia Madajewicz, Alexander Pfaff, Alexander van Geen, Joseph Graziano, Iftikhar Hussein, Hasina Momotaj, Roksana Sylvia, Habibul Ahsan
Journal of Development Economics 84 (2007) 731–754

PDF link iconWe study how effectively information induces Bangladeshi households to avoid a health risk. The response to information is large and rapid; knowing that the household’s well water has an unsafe concentration of arsenic raises the probability that the household changes to another well within one year by 0.37. Households who change wells increase the time spent obtaining water fifteen-fold. We identify a causal effect of information, since incidence of arsenic is uncorrelated with household characteristics. Our door-to-door information campaign provides well-specific arsenic levels without which behavior does not change. Media communicate general information about arsenic less expensively and no less effectively.

 

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Responses of 6500 households to arsenic mitigation in Araihazar, Bangladesh

Published January 2, 2007 by Alex Pfaff
Alisa Opar, Alexander Pfaff, A.A. Seddique, Kazi Matin Ahmed, Joseph H. Graziano, Alexander van Geen
Health & Place 13 (2007) 164–172

PDF link iconThis study documents the response of 6500 rural households in a 25 km2 area of Bangladesh to interventions intended to reduce their exposure to arsenic contained in well water. The interventions included public education, posting test results for arsenic on the wells, and installing 50 community wells. Sixty-five percent of respondents from the subset of 3410 unsafe wells changed their source of drinking water, often to new and untested wells. Only 15% of respondents from the subset of safe wells changed their source, indicating that health concerns motivated the changes. The geo-referenced data indicate that distance to the nearest safe well also influenced household responses.

 

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Climate, Stream Flow Prediction and Water Management in Northeast Brazil: societal trends and forecast value

Published January 1, 2007 by Alex Pfaff
Kenneth Broad, Alexander Pfaff, Renzo Taddei, Sankar Arumugam, Upmanu Lall, Francisco Assis de Souza Filho
Climatic Change (2007) 84:217–239

PDF link iconWe assess the potential benefits from innovative forecasts of the stream flows that replenish reservoirs in the semi-arid state of Ceará, Brazil. Such forecasts have many potential applications. In Ceará, they matter for both water-allocation and participatory-governance issues that echo global debates. Our qualitative analysis, based upon extensive fieldwork with farmers, agencies, politicians and other key actors in the water sector, stresses that forecast value changes as a society shifts. In the case of Ceará, current constraints on the use of these forecasts are likely to be reduced by shifts in water demand, water allocation in the agricultural Jaguaribe Valley, participatory processes for water allocation between this valley and the capital city of Fortaleza, and risk perception. Such changes in the water sector can also have major distributional impacts.

 

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Reduction in Urinary Arsenic Levels in Response to Arsenic Mitigation Efforts in Araihazar, Bangladesh

Published January 1, 2007 by Alex Pfaff
Yu Chen, Alexander van Geen, Joseph H. Graziano, Alexander Pfaff, Malgosia Madajewicz, Faruque Parvez, A.Z.M Iftehkar Hussain, Vesna Slavkovich, Tariqul Islam, Habibul Ahsan
Environmental Health Perspectives, Vol. 115, No. 6 (Jun., 2007), pp. 917-923

PDF link iconBACKGROUND: There is a need to identify and evaluate an effective mitigation program for arsenic exposure from drinking water in Bangladesh.   OBJECTIVE: We evaluated the effectiveness of a multifaceted mitigation program to reduce As exposure among 11,746 individuals in a prospective cohort study initiated in 2000 in Araihazar, Bangladesh, by interviewing participants and measuring changes in urinary As levels. METHODS: The interventions included  a) person-to-person reporting of well test results and health education; b) well labeling and village-level health education; and c) installations of fifty deep, low-As community wells in villages with the highest As exposure. RESULTS: Two years after these interventions, 58% of the 6,512 participants with unsafe wells (As >=50 micrograms/L) at baseline had responded by switching to other wells. Well labeling and village-level health education was positively related to switching to safe wells (As < 50 micrograms/L) among participants with unsafe wells [rate ratio(RR)= 1.84; 95% confidence interval(CI), 1.60-2.11] and inversely related to any well switching among those with safe wells (RR = 0.80; 95% CI, 0.66-0.98). The urinary As level in participants who switched to a well identified as safe (< 50 micrograms As/L) dropped from an average of 375 micrograms As/g creatinine to 200 micrograms As/g creatinine, a 46% reduction toward the average urinary As content of 136 micrograms As/g creatinine for participants that used safe wells throughout. Urinary As reduction was positively related to educational attainment, body mass index, never-smoking, absence of skin lesions, and time since switching (p for trend< 0.05). CONCLUSIONS: Our   study shows that testing of wells and informing households of the consequences of As exposure, combined with installation of deep community wells where most needed, can effectively address the continuing public health emergency from arsenic in drinking water in Bangladesh.

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