Willingness to pay to convert to a community sewage system: a case study in Louisiana

On-site waste treatment systems are a common alternative to traditional sewage infrastructure and often used by rural households and neighborhoods in the US. Without proper maintenance, these systems reduce water quality. A potential solution is to convert and connect all homes to a community sewage system. Conversion requires community-level buy-in, cooperation, and expense, but corresponding research in the US is absent. We provide a case study, examining household willingness to pay for one community in southeast Louisiana to convert to a community sewer system. Using an incentive compatible payment card elicitation, we find that household willingness to pay is $7.66–9.31 per month. This value depends on several factors, such as the number of years in the community, past septic issues, and some demographic characteristics. This low private benefit to households suggests that adopting community sewage systems are financially infeasible without accounting for public benefits.