Household Willingness to Pay for Improved Solid Waste Management in Akinyele Local Government Area

Abstract

Solid waste management is important in our society because it has direct effect on households’ health and society at large and the dangers that are associated with dirty environment are very serious. Solid waste problem is perhaps the most important environmental difficulty being faced with in Ibadan area, both from the generation and management points of view. Therefore, the study examines household willingness to pay for improved solid waste management in Akinyele Local Government Area. Data were collected from random selection of one hundred and twenty households with the aid of a well structured questionnaire. These data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and logit regression model.The study revealed that the average age of household heads in the study is 38.7 years and that 59.2 percent and 40.8 percent of the household respondents were female and male respectively. 51.7 percent were engaged in monthly paid job while the rest 48.3 percent were engaged in informal employment like artisan, trading and other daily earning jobs. The mean household size is 4.64. 53.3 percent of the respondents have tertiary education, 20 percent have secondary education, and 13.3 percent have primary education while only 5.8 percent have no formal education.Four methods of household’s solid waste collection with different price levels were used to determine households’ willingness to pay in the study area; these are; low cost system – N500 (Communal container), low cost system – N700 (Vehicle in the neighborhood), medium cost system – N900 (Communal container with a door to door collection), higher cost system – N1000 (Only door to door collection). The mean willingness to pay of households for the improved service is N686.07. The multivariate binary logistic regression revealed that the households’ willingness to pay was increased as price of the service decreased, reduced as age of the respondents increased, increased as level of education increased and reduced as household size increased.It was recommended that households should thereby attach a great value to their environment and demand and pay for whatever improved service introduced to them that will make their environment clean because environmental quality will greatly influence their general wellbeing and benefit them.

Keywords : Solid waste management, Willingness to pay, Environment, Logit Regression Model.