Transactions Template JOURNAL OF ENGINEERING RESEARCH AND TECHNOLOGY, VOLUME 6, ISSUE 2, OCTOBER 2019 21 Households’ Affordability and Willingness to Pay for Water Services in Khan Younis City, Palestine Mazen Abualtayef 1 , Yousef Oukal 1 , Said Ghabayen 1 , Mohamed Eila 2 , Hatem AbuEltayef 3 1 Environmental Engineering Department, the Islamic University of Gaza, Palestine 2 Projects and International Cooperation Environmental Quality Affairs, Palestine 3 Water Department, Municipality of Khan Younis, Palestine Abstract— Willingness and affordability to pay for water services are significant factors in deciding the success and failure of water supply services. Due to the fact that households’ willingness to pay for water services are too heavily influenced by specific circumstances, culture, and various social-economic factors, this study aimed at offering a comprehensive picture of the willingness and affordability of household to pay for water services in Khan Younis City. This may provide guideline for Palestinian policy makers to develop a successful water pricing. It also aimed at recognizing the factors that determine households’ willingness to pay and assessing households’ perception of the existing water supply situation and water problems. To fulfill the aim of the study, the researcher used quantitative research method where a questionnaire survey was conducted. The questionnaire was distributed to 400 citizens in Khan Younis city. A pilot study was accomplished and thirty copies of the questionnaire were distributed to receive feedback to modify the form, and to make it easier for respondents to deal with it. SPSS software package was applied to identify the most relevant factors affecting household's affordability, and willingness to pay. The results of the analyses indicated that income, water distribution schedule, water quality, water quantity, municipality services, marital status, water network maintenance, water continuity, techniques in the municipality to deliver citizen’s complaint satisfaction, staff response speed about the delivered complaint in the suitable time were determinants for household customer’s willingness to pay and had an effect on it. Furthermore, results revealed that satisfaction of households towards (water network maintenance, municipality service, available techniques in municipality to deliver citizen’s complaint, staff response speed about the delivered complaint in the suitable time and water quality) was not good. Therefore, the municipality of Khan Younis city has to make improvements to raise its services quality. Also, analysis indicated that there were different reasons for not committing to pay water bills. The most important ones were low income with percent 20.5%, the bad quality of water with percent 25.2% and bad municipality services with percent 17.9%. Based on the study findings, it is recommended that the municipality of Khan Younis city to make improvements to improve water quality. In addition the municipality and Coastal Municipalities Water Utility have to separate their presenting of services in order to make citizens have clear picture of their individual services and to motivate them to pay for improved water services. Index Terms— Affordability and willingness to pay, water services, Khan Younis I INTRODUCTION Water service is basic human right. In Palestine today, it cannot be fully enjoyed. The near decade long blockade on Gaza, deny Palestinians the control over their water resources and prevent them from developing adequate water services [1]. The water in the Gaza Strip is critical for many reasons, among others the repetition of con- flicts, the political instability, the lack of local available resources, the weak institutional framework, the depend- ency on external funding, and the difficulty to import materials and equipment. Significant effort has been made to improve access to water worldwide in recent years [2]. Though, the situa- tion is far from perfect, particularly in Gaza Strip. It is assumed to have adequate financial resources in order to generate a water supply system, preserve and progress the services. Accordingly, the users of the service must con- tribute to the cost of the improved service. According to CMWU [3], the situation was worsening by the conflict in July - August 2014. It was clear that the operation has a devastating impact in terms of humanitar- ian consequences and in particular severe damages to water infrastructure has been extensive. Additionally, the damages to the energy generation and electrical supply system, has resulted in a significant reduction in water supply to the population as well as deterioration in the quality of water (salinity). With the continuous disruption to water services, the people in the Gaza Strip have been made vulnerable to an ever worsening humanitarian crisis due to the lack of basic service provision, an unfolding environmental disaster and the potential health-related risks that come along with it. Consequently, water services were considered as an Mazen Abualtayef, Yousef Oukal, Said Ghabayen, Mohamed Eila, Hatem AbuEltayef/ Households’ Affordability and Willingness to Pay for Water Services in Khan Younis City, Palestine 22 economic good because it had price and prices were de- rived from tariffs and tariffs were advocated and formu- lated in line with the adopted water policy [4]. Water pricing is an effective strategy to manage water use. Transferring to a more suitable price scheme can regulate inefficient levels of domestic water use by varying household water demand. Developing countries are in need of more practical and effective water pricing meth- ods since they usually suffer from insufficient water sup- ply services and lack sophisticated and inclusive water pricing systems. The factors that affect households’ willingness to pay for improved water sources are too heavily influenced by specific circumstances, culture, and various social factors to be used outside of the specific scope of a study [5]. Due to the fact that people’s attitude towards paying for water is a key factor in deciding the success and failure of water supply projects [6]. Further, most of the municipalities suffer from gather- ing water services costs since citizens do not pay their water bills. This crisis should be managed carefully to secure the water demand with a successful price. There- fore, any improvement process for the water supply ser- vice will increase the cost of this service since valuation of water service is the key component of an appropriate incentive for balanced and coordinated investment devel- opment in the different parts of the city. Hence, this study endeavors to examine some of the factors that affect households’ willingness to pay for improved water ser- vices and to present their ability to pay for the improved water services in the city. This study sheds light on households’ willingness and affordability to pay for water services in Khan Younis city to generate useful baseline information for policy makers to improve a successful water supply policy. II MATERIALS AND METHODS The adopted methodology to accomplish this study is observational sectional approach, which is integrated to achieve the study objectives which were: measuring the ability and wiling to pay (WTP) for water supply service in the Khan Younis city and developing a water tariff model for municipal water departments in the Gaza Strip. A questionnaire was developed to the target group which was the customers of water supply in Khan Younis city. The strategy of this study has built on quantitative re- search method where the questionnaire survey was con- ducted. Consequently, in sight of the features of quantita- tive research method as a technique for easier and more precise thorough analysis, the questionnaire was chosen to identify the factors affecting household`s willingness and affordability to pay for water services. As stated by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statis- tics, the total number of household in Khan Younis city is 241,870, which means that 400 households is the sample. This sample is a random one, the questionnaire forms were distributed, filled and analyzed in Khan Younis city which has around 20 localities. Based on the review of related literature a questionnaire was established with closed and open-ended questions. The questionnaire was planned in the Arabic Language, as most of the target residents were unfamiliar with the English Language. In each questionnaire, a descriptive letter was involved to cover some moral considerations and to assist question- naire filling. The questionnaire consisted of three sec- tions. The first section was related to the social and the economic background of the respondent. The second sec- tion was about the current situation of water supply situa- tion. The third section addressed the quality and quantity of the service, and the customers’ satisfaction. The fourth part discussed the affordability of water consumption, etc. Moreover, the researcher distributed the organized ques- tionnaire to panels of experts with experience in the same area of the research to obtain their notes on the question- naire. After changing the questionnaire according to the commentaries of the experts and before distributing the final questionnaire on the entire sample, a pilot study is accomplished and 30 copies of the questionnaire are dis- tributed. The questionnaire was designed to be adminis- tered as a structured interview. Respondents were drawn from localities where the final survey was expected to be conducted. At the end of this process, the modifications are discussed with the supervisor, adjustments and addi- tion were introduced as well as the final form of the ques- tionnaire was constructed then the questionnaire was fi- nalized. III RESULTS AND DISCUSSION A total of 400 households answered the questionnaire from different localities of Khan Younis city. Of all the sample population, 20 responses were dropped because some of them lacked the required information and others gave unreliable and inconsistent answers. Hence, only 380 questionnaires were used for this analysis. Regarding the social and economic aspects of Khan Younis commu- nity, 87.4 % were male respondents while 12.6% were female respondents. From the total of 380 sampled households, 74% were educated and the rest 26% were not. According to the survey findings, 91.6% of the re- spondents are married. The single respondents are 5%. This reveals that the married respondent is responsible for the water cost and consumption. The data about the re- spondents’ age shows that the average ranges from 30 to above 40 years. 1. Cost of water paid from other resources per month It is clear that 82.1% of the households paid 50 NIS for water from other resources per month. It is believed that they buy water not because of water shortage but because the water quality is low. They used the water in cooking, taking shower and washing as the municipality water is too salty. Figure 1 shows the percentage and the frequen- Mazen Abualtayef, Yousef Oukal, Said Ghabayen, Mohamed Eila, Hatem AbuEltayef/ Households’ Affordability and Willingness to Pay for Water Services in Khan Younis City, Palestine 23 50 NIS 51-100 NIS more than 100NIS cost of other water resources Frequency 312 48 20 Percent 82.1 12.6 5.3 0 50 100 150 200 250 300 350 cy of the cost of water paid from other resources per month. Figure 1 Cost of water paid from other resources per month 2. Relationship between WTP and water quality satis- faction Results revealed that satisfaction of 45.5% of the households is poor and 45.0% is average while just 9.5% is good. This result indicates that water quality is not good in Khan Younis city and needs improvements to raise its quality. Table 1 shows that water quality satisfac- tion affects the willingness to pay since the significance is 0.00. This result asserts that most households confirm whenever water they are getting has good quality, their WTP rates are getting higher. This result is confirmed by several research findings. TABLE 1 One-way ANOVA for water quality satisfaction Willingness to pay water bill monthly Water quality satisfaction Sum of Squares df Mean Square F Sig. Be- tween groups 9.08 2 4.54 11.36 0.00 Within groups 150.67 377 0.40 Total 159.75 379 It is noted while distributing the questionnaire that the majority of the households have willingness to pay in- stead of raising water quality since they buy water from other resources not because of water shortage but because of water bad quality. This result is confirmed by the result of the item number (32) in the questionnaire that shows that 64% of the respondents agree to pay more for water quality improvements. Reviewing literature that has iden- tified some variables that have been used in previous studies corresponding an improved water quality that is linked to household’s willingness to pay investigation, households were commonly found to be willing to pay higher for improved water quality from most of the stud- ies. Cho et al. [7] study found that rural residents in Min- nesota are willing to pay to improve their drinking water quality by reducing the iron and sulfate concentration in the water. However, willingness to pay is less for con- sumers that notice they are provided with good quality water. In addition, Chi-square is done in order to test the ef- fect of water quality satisfaction upon households’ ac- ceptance to pay more for water improvement and quality. The table below illustrates that 63.9%% of the house- holds accepted to pay more for improvement, whereas 36.1 % of them did not accept to pay more for improving the services. Besides, chi- square test demonstrated that the significant value of the test is 0.02 which is less than 0.05, so it can be said that there is an effect of water qual- ity satisfaction upon households’ acceptance to pay more for water improvement and quality. TABLE 2 Crosstabs for water quality satisfaction If the municipality attend to raise water services price for improvement and quality, do you agree to pay more for this improvement Water quality satisfaction Total G o o d A v - e ra g e P o o r Yes Count 30 114 99 243 % within Q_32- If the municipality attend to raise water services price for improvement and quality, do you agree to pay more for this improvement 12.3% 46.9% 40.7% 100.0 % % within Q_19- Water quality satisfaction 83.3% 66.7% 57.2% 63.9% No Count 6 57 74 137 % within Q_32- If the municipality attend to raise water services price for improvement and quality, do you agree to pay more for this improvement 4.4% 41.6% 54.0% 100.0 % % within Q_19- Water quality satisfaction 16.7% 33.3% 42.8% 36.1% Total Count 36 171 173 380 % within Q_32- If the municipality attend to raise water services price for improvement and quality, do you agree to pay more for this improvement 9.5% 45.0% 45.5% 100.0 % % within Q_19- Water quality satisfaction 100.0 % 100.0 % 100.0 % 100.0 % TABLE 3 Chi-square tests for water quality satisfaction Value df Asymp. Sig. (2-sided) Pearson Chi-Square 9.807 2 .007 Mazen Abualtayef, Yousef Oukal, Said Ghabayen, Mohamed Eila, Hatem AbuEltayef/ Households’ Affordability and Willingness to Pay for Water Services in Khan Younis City, Palestine 24 Likelihood Ratio 10.496 2 .005 Linear-by-Linear Association 9.385 1 .002 N of Valid Cases 380 3. Relationship between WTP and water network maintenance satisfaction Table 4 shows the values of one-way ANOVA and re- gression tests. They reveal that water network mainte- nance satisfaction affects the households’ willingness to pay for water services, the significance value is 0.00. TABLE 4 One-way ANOVA for water network maintenance satisfaction Willingness to pay water bill monthly Water net- work maintenance satisfaction Sum of Squares df Mean Square F Sig. Between groups 18.488 2 9.244 24.671 0 Within groups 141.259 377 0.375 Total 159.747 379 Results show that the respondents suffer from many problems in water networks. They do not mind to pay extra money in order to solve these problems and to make maintenance for their networks continuously. This corre- lates with the findings of the study that shows the satis- faction of the respondents towards water network maintenance satisfaction as the satisfaction of 35.5% of the households is poor and 50% is average while just 14.5% is good. This result indicates that water networks in Khan Younis city needs maintenance to increase the satisfaction. It is clear that the siege in Gaza strip pre- vents the municipality to improve and maintain the net- works of water. Also, the cost of maintenance equipment is very high. The results of this study agree with the results of Al- Ghuraiz and Enshasi [8] study showed that the majority of the respondents (97.2%) believed that it is necessary to improve the quality and quantity of water supply service. It was observed that 74.5% was convinced that the im- provement process needs extra cost while 14.3% believed the contrary. The results also show that 82.8% of the re- spondents were willing to pay for improvement services, whereas 17.2% preferred the situation to remain as it is without any improvement because they are not able to pay. 4. Affordability to pay for water services In order to check the respondents’ affordability to pay for water services chi-square test, percentages ad frequencies are addressed in this section. Results of the above table showed that education has affected the respondents’ commitment to pay, 69% of the educated respondents are affordable to pay. The findings were similar to those from other studies where the level of education had an influence on the respondents’ afford- ability to pay [9, 10]. This was because, as the respond- ents were more educated and with better paying jobs and could not afford time to collect water from the sources outside their homesteads. Thus, these respondents were willing to pay for a reliable water services instead of struggling to get water. TABLE 5 Payment commitment per month Q_37- Your pay- ment commitment per month H ig h P e rc e n ta g e A v e ra g e P e rc e n ta g e L o w P e rc e n ta g e T o ta l Q_2- Gender of the re- spond- ent Male 95 29 113 34 124 37 332 Female 14 29 12 25 22 46 48 Q_3- Age of the re- spond- ent less than 20 1 25 1 25 2 50 4 20-30 9 16 24 43 23 41 56 31-40 47 32 47 32 53 36 147 Above 40 52 30 53 31 68 39 173 Q_4- Marital status of the re- spond- ent mar- ried 102 29 114 33 132 38 348 single 4 21 6 32 9 47 19 wid- ower 1 17 2 33 3 50 6 di- vorced 2 29 3 43 2 29 7 Q_5- Educa- tion of the re- spond- ent elemen men- tary 2 18 5 45 4 36 11 Prepar- atory 7 33 6 29 8 38 21 Sec- ondary 17 25 21 31 29 43 67 Bachlo r 58 26 81 36 84 38 223 Higher Educa- tion 25 43 12 21 21 36 58 Q_7- Occu- pation of the re- spond- ent Em- ployee 49 34 45 31 50 35 144 Worker 24 25 40 42 32 33 96 Private work 30 30 30 30 41 41 101 Unem- ployed 6 15 10 26 23 59 39 Q_8- Amoun t of the re- spond- ent’s income 500- 1000 NIS 20 21 35 36 41 43 96 1000- 2500NI S 51 29 61 35 63 36 175 2500- 4000 30 33 22 24 39 43 91 Above 4000 8 44 7 39 3 17 18 Mazen Abualtayef, Yousef Oukal, Said Ghabayen, Mohamed Eila, Hatem AbuEltayef/ Households’ Affordability and Willingness to Pay for Water Services in Khan Younis City, Palestine 25 It is clarified from Figure (2) that 28.7% of the re- spondents have the ability to pay since their commitment is high. While 38.4% have low ability to pay. This reveals that the majority of the respondents are not committed to pay for water services for different reasons. Figure 2 Payment commitment per month Findings of Figure (3) demonstrated that 27.4% of the respondents are committed to pay their bills and 72.6% are not committed to pay their water bills for different reasons. The most important reasons are low income with percent 20.5%, the bad quality of water with percent 25.2% and bad municipality services with percent 17.9%. Correspondingly, it can be concluded that high cost low income level bad quantity and quality and bad municipal- ity services (water network maintenance, quick responses to citizens ‘complains and regular reader visits) have an impact on the respondents’ commitment to pay their wa- ter bills every month. Figure 3 The reasons of not paying It can be seen that the results of the analyses indicated that income, water distribution schedule, water quality, water quantity, municipality services, marital status, wa- ter network maintenance, water continuity, techniques in the municipality to deliver citizen’s complaint satisfac- tion, staff response speed about the delivered complaint in the suitable time that have been assumed as the factors for household customer’s willingness to pay, all of them are significant. These factors of household’s willingness to pay are already expected and are in line with previous studies. Several studies have asserted the importance of water quality and color [11, 12], and they discussed the fact that water users are willing to pay more for better water quali- ty [9], to reduce water pollution [7] and to be provided with continuous water supply. The current study revealed that income is a factor for household customer’s willingness to pay that agrees with several previous researches [14, 7, 15]. In this study, it is presumed that when household’s income is increased, there should be an increase in the household’s willingness to pay for water no matter the amount. Moreover, Wahid and Hooi [16] have recommended that willingness to pay is a result of numerous factors or features that are emo- tionally important to the household customers. Also, the results of this study emphasized by Al-Ghuraiz and Enshasi [8] who concentrate on some essential factors such as water consumption, quality and quantity, socio- economic situation, WTP, ability, and affordability. IV CONCLUSIONS For socio-economic characteristics of the respondents: the majority of respondents were household heads (84%) aged between 31 and above, and 15% were aged from 20 to 30 years old. 91.6% of the respondents are married and the single respondents are 5%. Respondents’ educational level is very high, as almost 60% have their bachelor de- gree and 15% have got their high education degree. 46% of the respondents have 1001 to 2500 NIS income and 25% have very low income from 500 to 1000 NIS. For household’s access to water and water quality and quantity: the satisfaction of water quality of 45.5% of the households is poor and 45% is average while just 9.5% is good. 48.4% of the households paid 55 NIS, 36.1% paid 25 NIS, 11.3% paid 115 NIS and just 4.2% paid more than 175 NIS so, water bills can be paid since it is not too much. 67.1% of the households have very good water distribution schedule since their schedule of distribution every day and every two days. Only 5.3% of the respondents suffer from water shortage as water comes every week. 82.1% of the households paid 50 NIS for water from other resources per month. It is believed that they buy water not because of water shortage but because the water quality is low. The satisfaction towards water network maintenance of 35.5% of the households is poor and 50 % is average while just 14.5% is good. 43.4% of the households see that municipality service is poor. While 18.9% have good satisfaction. Therefore, the municipality of Khan Younis city has to make improve- high average low payment commitment Frequency 109 125 146 Percent 28.7 32.9 38.4 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160 High cost of bill Low incom e level Bad quality and quantit y of water Bad munici pality service s. Others reasons of not paying Percent 6.8 20.5 25.2 17.9 2.1 .0 5.0 10.0 15.0 20.0 25.0 30.0 Mazen Abualtayef, Yousef Oukal, Said Ghabayen, Mohamed Eila, Hatem AbuEltayef/ Households’ Affordability and Willingness to Pay for Water Services in Khan Younis City, Palestine 26 ments to raise its services quality. The satisfaction upon the available techniques in Khan Younis municipality to deliver citizen’s complaint is 41% of the households is poor and 44% is average while just 15% is good. 48.4% of the respondents’ satisfaction about staff response speed about the delivered complaint in the suitable time is aver- age and 41.6% of the respondents’ satisfaction is poor. For factors affecting willingness to pay for water: It can be seen that the results of the analyses indicated that income, water distribution schedule, water quality, water quantity, municipality services, marital status, water net- work maintenance, water continuity, techniques in the municipality to deliver citizen’s complaint satisfaction, staff response speed about the delivered complaint in the suitable time that have been assumed as the factors for household customer’s willingness to pay, all of them are significant. For affordability to pay for water: 28.7% of the re- spondents have the ability to pay since their commitment is high. While 38.4% have low ability to pay. Results showed that education has affected the respondents’ commitment to pay, 69% of the educated respondents are affordable to pay. There are different reasons for not committing to pay water bills. The most important ones are low income with percent 20.5%, the bad quality of water with percent 25.2% and bad municipality services with percent 17.9%. There is an effect of cost of water consumption paid per month upon households’ ac- ceptance to pay more for water improvement and quality. There is an effect of water quality satisfaction upon households’ acceptance to pay more for water improve- ment and quality. There are statistically significant differ- ences at (α≤0.05) between regular water reader visit and the households’ affordability to pay for water improve- ment and quality. 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