Valuing Irrigation Water Attributes

Natural resources such as water and environmental attributes are valuable assets to humans. Despite the various benefits derived from these resources obtaining the appropriate price for environmental resources is a bit difficult due to the absence of market. As a result most of the time macro-economic planners fail to recognize the total value of these resources. Thus failure of the market system to allocate a price for environmental resources correctly creates the need for economic measures of values to guide policy making. This book thus analyses the determinants of households¿ willingness to pay for irrigation water supply by using contingent valuation and choice experiment methods. Multinomial logit, Probit and random parameter logit models were used to analyze the factors influencing households¿ willingness to pay and to estimate measures of welfare change for farm households. The practical analysis on environmental resource valuation would be handy to professionals in environmental and natural resources economics fields or anyone else interested in pricing of environmental resources.