Household preferences and willingness to pay for waste management services in Nsukka urban area

In recent years, the population of Nsukka has increased, brought about by rapid urbanization, and has increased waste generation. Consequently, establishing effective waste management strategy is imperative given the inherent danger it poses to a sustainable environment. The concern of this study is to examine household preferences and willingness to pay for waste management (WMS) in Nsukka urban area. The survey method was employed to generate responses from 150 households selected from the six areas that make up Nsukka urban. The probit regression analysis (a variant of the least dependent variable model (LDVM) was adopted to estimate the impact of cultural, demographic and economic factors on household preferences and willingness to pay for waste management services (WMS). The study found that demographic factors such as age, household size and education have a significant effect on household willingness to demand waste management in Nsukka urban area. As evidenced by the estimated coefficient, gender (0.57), education (0.15) and family size (0.65) have a positive effect while age (-0.17) and marital status (-0.22) have negative effect on household preferences and willingness to pay for waste management services (WMS) in Nsukka urban. Moreover, cost of waste management (p<0.05), average monthly income (p<0.05) and awareness significantly affect demand for waste management services while house ownership has an insignificant effect on household preference and willingness to pay for waste management services. Even though the estimated coefficient indicates that cost of waste management, household income, awareness and house ownership has a positive effect, the efficacy of cost (2.79) is greater than that of income (1.27), followed by awareness (1.04) and then house ownership (0.02). Based on the empirical findings, this study recommends a need for government to subsidize the amount paid for waste management in order to enhance household preferences and willingness to pay for such services.