The Impact of Conditional Cash Transfer on Toilet Use in eThekwini, South Africa
1
Eawag, Ueberlandstrasse 133, 8600 Duebendorf, Switzerland
2
Department of Environmental Health, University of Malawi, The Polytechnic, Chichiri, Blantyre 3, Malawi
3
NADEL: Centre for Development and Cooperation, ETH Zurich, Clausiusstrasse 37, 8057 Zurich, Switzerland
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Academic Editor: Vincenzo Torretta
Sustainability 2016, 8(10), 1070; https://doi.org/10.3390/su8101070
Received: 12 August 2016 / Revised: 15 October 2016 / Accepted: 18 October 2016 / Published: 22 October 2016
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainable Development of Sanitation, Water Supply and Solid Waste in Low-and Middle Income Settings)
In the developing world, having access to a toilet does not necessarily imply use: infrequent or non-use limits the desired health outcomes of improved sanitation. We examine the sanitation situation in a rural part of South Africa where recipients of novel, waterless “urine-diverting dry toilets” are not regularly using them. In order to determine if small, conditional cash transfers (CCT) could motivate families to use their toilets more, we paid for urine via different incentive-based interventions: two were based on volumetric pricing and the third was a flat-rate payment (irrespective of volume). A flat-rate payment (approx. €1) resulted in the highest rates of regular (weekly) participation at 59%. The low volumetric payment (approx. €0.05/L) led to regular participation rates of only 12% and no increase in toilet use. The high volumetric payment (approx. €0.1/L) resulted in lower rates of regular participation (35%), but increased the average urine production per household per day by 74%. As a first example of conditional cash transfers being used in the sanitation sector, we show that they are an accepted and effective tool for increasing toilet use, while putting small cash payments in the hands of poor, largely unemployed populations in rural South Africa.
View Full-Text
Keywords:
sanitation; urine; South Africa; CCT; incentives; economics; cash transfer
▼
Show Figures
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited
-
Externally hosted supplementary file 1
Doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.7910/DVN/QPHB7Z
Description: Data set
MDPI and ACS Style
Tilley, E.; Günther, I. The Impact of Conditional Cash Transfer on Toilet Use in eThekwini, South Africa. Sustainability 2016, 8, 1070.
AMA Style
Tilley E, Günther I. The Impact of Conditional Cash Transfer on Toilet Use in eThekwini, South Africa. Sustainability. 2016; 8(10):1070.
Chicago/Turabian StyleTilley, Elizabeth; Günther, Isabel. 2016. "The Impact of Conditional Cash Transfer on Toilet Use in eThekwini, South Africa" Sustainability 8, no. 10: 1070.
Find Other Styles
Note that from the first issue of 2016, MDPI journals use article numbers instead of page numbers. See further details here.
Search more from Scilit