Willingness to pay for water and water rights definition: study among smallholder irrigators in Limpopo province, South Africa

S. Speelman, M. D’haese, A. Frija, Stefano Farolfi () and L. D’haese
Additional contact information
A. Frija: ICARDA - International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas [Jordanie]

Post-Print from HAL

Abstract: Internationally there is growing understanding that water rights are important and that a lack of effective water rights systems creates major problems for the management of increasingly scarce water supplies. In South Africa the smallholder irrigation sector faces two major challenges. Firstly water use is inefficient and secondly government, which in the past invested huge amounts of money in the sector, targets improved cost recovery. Improving the definition of the water rights system can have a positive effect with regard to these challenges. At one hand improvements in the definition of water rights can stimulate smallholders to use water more productively, encouraging cooperation and investment; at the other hand an improved water rights system increases willingness to pay for water, allowing government to charge higher water prices and thus improve cost recovery. This study proposes contingent ranking to analyse the willingness to pay of smallholder irrigators for changes in the water rights system. Results indicate that smallholders are prepared to pay considerably higher water prices if these prices are connected with advancements in the water rights system. In a second step the sample population was stratified to evaluate the impact of smallholder characteristics on their willingness to pay. The groups. For example farmers suffering water shortages attach more importance to secure water supply. Policy makers can use such results to guide reforms in the design of water rights and to increase public support for interventions.

Keywords: contingent ranking water rights South Africa willingness to pay irrigation efficiency; contingent ranking; water rights; South Africa; willingness to pay; irrigation; efficiency (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009-09-09
Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://hal.science/hal-04058999v1
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Published in WATER RESOURCES MANAGEMENT 2009, Sep 2009, Malta, Malta. pp.341-352, ⟨10.2495/WRM090311⟩

Downloads: (external link)
https://hal.science/hal-04058999v1/document (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:hal-04058999

DOI: 10.2495/WRM090311

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Post-Print from HAL
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CCSD ().