4.3 Factors influencing willingness to pay for improved waste management services

To identify the factors influencing the willingness to pay of the sex, age, educational level, family size, monthly income, present cleaning status and maximum amount of willing to pay of the respondents for improved solid waste management, the respondents to the willingness to pay was regressed on the prices they were asked to pay and on the other socio- economic characteristics of the households. The logit regression Model was specified as

$$\mathbf{Y} = \frac{1}{\mathbf{1} + \mathbf{exp}^{-\mathbf{z}}} \mathbf{z}$$

Z = β<sup>0</sup> + β1x1 + β2x2 + β3x3 + β4x4 + β5x5 + β6x6 + β7x7

Y = Response of the education, occupation, household size, income, method of collection, agency of collection, amount they were willing to pay, for the respondents to the willingness to pay question which was either '1' if Yes or '0' if No.

x1 = sex (dummy: Male = 1, Female = 2),

$$\mathbf{x\_2} = \text{Age (years)},$$

x3 = Education (Dummy: Primary = 1, Secondary = 2, University level = 3),

x4 = Family size (numbers),

x5 = Monthly income INR (Indian rupees'00),

x6 = Present solid waste cleaning status if satisfied (dummy: yes = 1, no = 0),

x7 = maximum amount of willing to pay.

The pseudo-R square and the chi-square were used to measure the goodness of fit of the model and the significance of the model used.

Table 1 had depicted population and solid waste generation of semi-urban areas of Madurai district. Avaniyapuram has been highest waste generation in Madurai


#### Table 3.

Descriptive statistics.

compared to other semi-urban areas. This table clearly shows that the Thiruparankundram semi-urban areas are second highest population and waste generation. Semi- urban areas had been one of the more wastes contribution by these percentage are in Madurai district; per day total waste generation 67 metric tonnes as shown in table (Table 3).

#### 4.4 Data description

Table 4 provides WTP responses in relation to the socio economic characteristics of the sample households. About 96% of the respondents had positive WTP values for the improvement in solid waste management services. The average monthly income of the sample households was INR 7865 with a minimum monthly income INR 2300 and a maximum of the INR 18500. The average of respondents was 46 years and average family size 1.44. Furthermore, about 50.7% of the respondents were willing to pay more than 100 for clean environmental services. While this survey had found that the highest percent of the respondents had primary education 84 and 11.3% respondents was secondary education level. Found this survey percent of the respondents mentioned the solid waste problems in their neighborhood to be one of the most urgent environmental problems.
