Household Preferences On Provision Of Solid Waste Management Services In Kinondoni Municipality, Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania

ABSTRACT

Privatization of solid waste management services has not achieved the anticipated results of improving solid waste management in the country. In most urban areas, the provided solid waste management services are not appreciated and supported by service receivers. This may be due to non-inclusion of household preferences and willingness to pay for solid waste management services in designing these services. A Choice Experiment Method was used in this study to assess household preferences and their willingness to pay for solid waste management services in Kinondoni municipality. Choice cards, questionnaire and checklists were used to collect data from 240 households. The solid waste management services were decomposed into 3 attributes, namely use of vehicles in transporting solid waste, frequency of solid waste collection and provision of polythene bags for storage of solid waste. Results showed that households mostly prefer use of vehicles in transportation of solid waste and frequency of solid waste collection attributes and they are willing to pay for these attributes. Provision of polythene bags attribute was not preferred by households. The estimated implicit prices per month for vehicles, polythene bags and frequency of solid waste collection were TZS 1056.022, TZS - 148.128, TZS 4104.562 respectively for low income households and TZS 2713.439, TZS - 1301.25, TZS 9245.522 respectively for high income households. On average, the estimated compensating surplus also known as willingness to pay per month were TZS 7192.944 and TZS 16 313.682 for low and high income households respectively. The findings also show that there are high variations in household preferences for solid waste management services. In order to improve solid waste management services in Kinondoni municipality, policy makers and solid waste management service providers should incorporate household preferences and their willingness to pay for solid waste management services when designing these services.