Marketing Household Water Treatment: Willingness to Pay Results from an Experiment in Rural Kenya. Water 2014, 6, 1873-1886; doi:10.3390/w6071873.

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Annalise G. Blum 1, Clair Null 2 and Vivian Hoffmann 3,*
1 Department of Environmental Sciences & Engineering, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 148 Rosenau Hall, Chapel Hill, NC 27516, USA; E-Mail: annalise@live.unc.edu
2 Rollins School of Public Health, Emory University, 1518 Clifton Road, Atlanta, GA 30322, USA; E-Mail: clair.null@emory.edu
3 International Food Policy Research Institute, 2033 K Street NW, Washington, DC 20006, USA
* Author to whom correspondence should be addressed; E-Mail: v.hoffmann@cgiar.org

Despite increasing availability of household water treatment products, demand in developing countries remains low. Willingness to pay for water treatment products and factors that affect demand are not well understood. In this study, we estimate willingness to pay for WaterGuard, a dilute chlorine solution for point-of-use water treatment, using actual purchase decisions at randomly assigned prices. Secondly, we identify household characteristics that are correlated with the purchase decision. Among a sample of 854 respondents from 107 villages in rural Kenya, we find that mean willingness to pay is approximately 80% of the market price. Although only 35% of sample households purchased WaterGuard at the market price, 67% of those offered a 50% discount purchased the product.

A marketing message emphasizing child health did not have a significant effect on purchase behavior, overall or among the subset of households with children under five. These findings suggest that rural Kenyans are willing to pay for WaterGuard at low prices but are very sensitive to increasing price. Households with young children that could benefit the most from use of WaterGuard do not appear to be more likely to purchase the product, and a marketing message designed to target this population was ineffective.

JOURNAL OF PUBLIC HEALTH, 2012, DOI: 10.1007/s10389-012-0515-x

Barriers to accessing water, sanitation and hygiene among people living with HIV/AIDS in Gomba and Mpigi districts in Uganda: a qualitative study

Richard Kibirango Mugambe, Nazarius Mbona Tumwesigye and Fiona Larkan

Aim -To explore the challenges that people living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHA) experience in accessing water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) so as to inform policy and promote pro-HIV/AIDS WASH programs as well as equity in WASH investments.

Methods – This was a descriptive study that utilized qualitative methods for data collection. The study population comprised of PLWHA as well as environmental health officers, water officers, medical doctors and HIV/AIDS care providers in Mpigi and Gomba districts, Uganda. Six focus group discussions (FGDs) with PLWHA (three for men and three for women) and twelve key informants (KIs) interviews were conducted. A moderator and a note taker facilitated the FGDs, which were tape recorded with consent from participants. Qualitative content analysis was done.

Results – The KIs interviews and FGDs revealed that PLWHA in the study districts were facing serious challenges in accessing and utilizing WASH services. It was realized that the safe water coverage in the study area was low and PLWHA had limited access to improved water sources. Additionally, they experienced social prejudices that left them in a position where they felt like they were not good enough, inferior and isolated. Such feelings were affecting access to and utilization of WASH services for some PLWHA. Many PLWHA reported that the cost of water per 20-L jerrican (0.04 USD at some improved sources and 0.4–0.6 USD from water vendors) was high and unimproved sources such as ponds and dams were the alternative. They also had a bad attitude towards Water Guard noting that it causes a bad taste in water and does not reduce the turbidity.

Conclusion – PLWHA face financial, attitudinal, knowledge, social, physical as well as institutional and sustainability barriers to accessing and utilizing WASH services. There is, therefore, a need to design and implement appropriate WASH sensitization programs for PLWHA. Water treatment using disinfectants that do not alter taste and can reduce turbidity of water should be promoted and such disinfectants should be made available in health facilities for PLWHA to get either for free or at subsidized prices.

Household Water Treatment: Flocculant/Disinfectant Powder, 2011. CDC.

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The Procter & Gamble Company developed PUR Purifier of Water™ in conjunction with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.  PUR sachets are now centrally produced in Pakistan, and sold to nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) worldwide at a cost of 3.5 US cents per sachet.  The PUR product is a small sachet containing powdered ferric sulfate (a flocculant) and calcium hypochlorite (a disinfectant).  PUR was designed to reverse-engineer a water treatment plant, incorporating the multiple barrier processes of removal of particles and disinfection. To treat water with PUR, users open the sachet, add the contents to an open bucket containing 10 liters of water, stir for 5 minutes, let the solids settle to the bottom of the bucket, strain the water through a cotton cloth into a second container, and wait 20 minutes for the hypochlorite to inactivate the microorganisms.

PLoS One. 2011;6(10):e26132.

What Point-of-Use Water Treatment Products Do Consumers Use? Evidence from a Randomized Controlled Trial among the Urban Poor in Bangladesh.

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Luoto J, Najnin N, Mahmud M, Albert J, Islam MS, Luby S, Unicomb L, Levine DI. RAND Corporation, Santa Monica, California, United States of America.

BACKGROUND: There is evidence that household point-of-use (POU) water treatment products can reduce the enormous burden of water-borne illness. Nevertheless, adoption among the global poor is very low, and little evidence exists on why.

METHODS: We gave 600 households in poor communities in Dhaka, Bangladesh randomly-ordered two-month free trials of four water treatment products: dilute liquid chlorine (sodium hypochlorite solution, marketed locally as Water Guard), sodium dichloroisocyanurate tablets (branded as Aquatabs), a
combined flocculant-disinfectant powdered mixture (the PUR Purifier of Water), and a silver-coated ceramic siphon filter. Consumers also received education on the dangers of untreated drinking water. We measured which products consumers used with self-reports, observation (for the filter), and chlorine tests (for the other products). We also measured drinking water’s contamination with E. coli (compared to 200 control households).

FINDINGS: Households reported highest usage of the filter, although no product had even 30% usage. E. coli concentrations in stored drinking water were generally lowest when households had Water Guard. Households that self-reported product usage had large reductions in E. coli concentrations with any product as compared to controls.

CONCLUSION: Traditional arguments for the low adoption of POU products focus on affordability, consumers’ lack of information about germs and the dangers of unsafe water, and specific products not meshing with a
household’s preferences. In this study we provided free trials, repeated informational messages explaining the dangers of untreated water, and a variety of product designs. The low usage of all products despite such
efforts makes clear that important barriers exist beyond cost, information, and variation among these four product designs. Without a better understanding of the choices and aspirations of the target end-users,
household-based water treatment is unlikely to reduce morbidity and mortality substantially in urban Bangladesh and similar populations.

This page will contain links to reports, articles, presentations, etc. that are supported by USAID (back to 2007).

• Click on the publication titles to view/download the document.

2010 Publications

• Public-Private Partnership Model for Point-of-Use Water Disinfection among Lower Income Households: A demonstration project In Uttar Pradesh, India. October 2010. Washington, DC: Point-of-Use Water Disinfection and Zinc Treatment (POUZN) Project.
• USAID – Point-of-Use Water Treatment: What Do We Know? How to Move Forward? 2010.  (pdf, 500KB) – A report on the USAID-sponsored meeting: Household Water Treatment: What Do We Know? How to Move Forward?

2009 Publications

• Boiling: Household Water Treatment Options in Developing Countries. January 2009. CDC Safewater/USAID. (pdf, 538KB). Boiling is arguably the oldest and most commonly practiced household water treatment method, and it has been widely promoted for decades. Organizations recommend boiling both for water treatment in developing countries and to provide safe drinking water in emergency situations throughout the world.
• Filtration & Chlorination Systems: Household Water Treatment Options in Developing Countries. January 2009. CDC Safewater/USAID. (pdf, 150KB). Several household water treatment systems incorporate both a physical filtration step for particle removal and a chlorination step for disinfection. This dual approach leads to high quality treated water.

• Safe Storage of Drinking Water: Preventing Diarrheal Disease in Developing Countries. January 2009. CDC Safewater/USAID. (pdf, 254KB). Safe storage options fall into three general categories: 1) existing water storage containers in the home; 2) water storage containers used in the community and modified by an intervention program; or, 3) commercial safe storage containers purchased by the program and distributed to users.
• Simple Options to Remove Turbidity: Preventing Diarrheal Disease in Developing Countries. January 2009. CDC Safewater/USAID. (pdf, 173KB). Filtration or flocculation remove particles and reduce turbidity. These pretreatment methods may also increase the efficacy of household water treatment products by removing contaminants that interfere with disinfection and physical filtration processes.

2008 Publications – Household Water Treatment Options in Developing Countries Fact Sheets

• Ceramic Filtration (pdf, 128KB)
• Flocculant/Disinfectant Powder (pdf, 162KB)
• Household Chlorination (pdf, 213KB)
• Safe Water System (pdf, 244KB)
• Solar Disinfection (SODIS) (pdf, 161KB)
• Proven Household Water Treatment Options (pdf, 143KB)
• Interventions to Reduce Diarrheal Disease (pdf, 116KB)

2007 Publications

• Best Practices in Social Marketing Safe Water Solution for Household Water Treatment: Lessons Learned from Population Services International Field Programs. 2007. The Social Marketing Plus for Diarrheal Disease Control: Point-of-Use Water Disinfection and Zinc Treatment (POUZN) Project. Abt Associates Inc., Bethesda, MD.  This paper synthesizes lessons learned, best practices, successes and challenges of social marketing safe water solution, and discusses how these lessons may be applied to planning safe water treatment programs around the globe.