ANNOUNCEMENTS
Water scarcity is an issue that needs urgent attention especially in developing and under-developed countries. Various global studies have documented the issue of water scarcity and poor water quality. Indian states like Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand. have been facing water scarcity as of late. There are also issues of poor water quality leading to health impacts on the local communities. The current study addresses the issue through the adoption of Rooftop Rainwater Harvesting (RRWH). Dehradun in the state of Uttarakhand has been chosen as the study site. The paper examines the willingness to pay (WTP) of local residents towards a participatory RRWH system using a Contingent Valuation Method (CVM). A payment card method of WTP elicitation has been selected where the payment vehicle has been chosen as surcharge in the water bill. A binary Logit model has been applied to study the impact of socio-economic characteristics, housing characteristics and water scarcity on the probability of people being willing to pay towards the proposed participatory system. A purposive sample of 104 respondents has been has been selected in the context of the study. All the socio-economic characteristics, housing characteristics etc. have been recorded. Further a collective action framework has been proposed for the Community-based RRWH (CB-RRWH) system. The study finds that people in the study area are receptive towards the idea of RRWH but more efforts need to be put by the state government to make people aware of RRWH.
