UP: Are you willing to pay for community toilet access?

After Finish Society-backed Harmen Leijnse’s recent toilet tour of North India, a Spain-based researcher is asking people in Lucknow and Kanpur if they are willing to pay (WTP) to use a community toilet.

Alex Armand, associate researcher at the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS), UK, is currently in Lucknow to evaluate people’s mindset on cleanliness. The theme of his study is – ‘Community toilets in slums: Willingness to pay for and usage of community toilets’ in select communities of Lucknow and Kanpur.

Alex Armand. (HT )

Giving details of the project helmed by Finish Society, IFS and Morsel, Armand shared: “Through the study, we will try and understand how we can improve slum dwellers’ sanitation practices and understand the behavioural aspects of users and operators.”

“Our aim is to promote regular usage by increasing awareness and improving the quality of community toilets. The purpose of the study is to break a vicious cycle by making community toilets more attractive, increase profits and usage and improve environmental quality and health in slums,” said Armand.

This joint initiative of Finish Society, IFS & Morsel, is on between January 2018 and January 2019. Approved by the University College London (UCL) Research Ethics Committee (Project ID Number: 2168/012), it is funded by the International Initiative for Impact Evaluation.

IFS is a premier economic research institute based in London, and specialises in public policy. It is Britain’s leading independent microeconomic research institute and has gained worldwide reputation for academic rigour, and contributes to the development of academic scholarship.

As for Alex Armand, he is assistant professor at the Navarra Centre for International Development at the University of Navarra, Spain, and associate researcher at the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS), UK.

His primary fields of interest are development economics, applied microeconomics and policy evaluation.