Abstract:
Solid waste management service is one of the major services that city governments are
expected to provide to their residents. However, continuous neglect, inappropriate
organization, inadequate financing, lack of human resource and the like have hindered the
effectiveness of the service delivery in developing countries, especially in Sub-Saharan
African countries like Ethiopia. This study was undertaken to examine households’
willingness to pay for improved solid waste management service in Babile town of eastern
Ethiopia. The study used both primary and secondary data. A sample of 121 households was
drawn using a random sampling technique for an interview. Descriptive statistics, choice
experiment and econometrics models were used to analyze the data. Choice modeling (CM) was
employed to estimate household’s WTP for improved solid waste management service. The
finding of this study showed that there was no solid waste collecting, transporting and
disposal service provision in the town. Multinomial logit results also showed that WTP of
households for improved SWM are significantly related to education, years of stay in the
area, distance from the main road, income, and number of children. The implicit price
estimation results of the study also indicated that the implicit prices for all the attributes are
positive and the marginal WTP for frequency of waste collection and sorting of waste at
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source are Birr 10.40 and Birr 13.52 respectively. In conclusion, households support
improvement in solid waste management service in terms of collection frequency and waste
separation at source.
