Author : Tran Thi Thu Trang

Summary : This study estimated the willingness-to-pay and determined the factors affecting the perception and decision of agro-food processing households on wastewater treatment in selected traditional agro-food processing village, Nhue-Day River Basin, Vietnam. Results showed that the mean maximum WTP for wastewater treatment in the research sites is equivalent to VND100,610/month or US$4.42/month. Therefore, the total annual environmental fee for wastewater treatment is estimated as 1,089 million VND (equal to US$47,868/year) for the total of 902 agro-food processing households in three research sites in Hanoi City.

Older men and household heads are more likely to give a high awareness about the consequences of untreated wastewater. The other factors namely education level of respondents, frequency of occurrence of sickness by family members, logarithm average monthly income of household have significantly impact (p-value <0.05) to the households' awareness. In addition, with regard to the households' decision in willingness-to pay for wastewater treatment, the results of this model showed that the amount of money that households would be willing to pay is positively associated with all of explained variables which are statistically significant (p-value < 0.05).

An additional year of education level, the presence of children below 16 years old, high costs of health care services from members who got sick, high awareness of treated wastewater benefits bring about 1.34%, 5.13%,1.46%, and 8.16% increase of households' choosing VND200,000/month for wastewater treatment, respectively. In addition, households who have access to credit and are member of the Craft Village's Association are 8% and 6.79% more likely to willing to pay VND200,00/month for wastewater treatment.

The study recommends encouraging agro-food processing households to become members in the Craft Villages' Association, increasing credit facilities access, improving the wastewater collection system, constructing new wastewater treatment plants, and restoring the ecosystem in Nhue-Day River Basin.