Naz, Antonia Corinthia C and Mario Tuscan N. Naz. 2006. Modeling ...

7.0 SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS
The study used the stated preference choice modeling method to assess the
preferences of households and business establishments for ecological solid waste
management services (waste collection, transport and disposal). Almost all of the
households and business establishments interviewed believed that the Tuba municipal
government will be able to provide the ECOSWAM service within three years after the
survey. They also agreed that a garbage or user fee is a good way to finance the service.
They were willing to reduce their expenditures for recreation, transportation and
electricity in order to pay their garbage fees.
The frequency of waste collection, price of the service or user fee and collector of
waste significantly influenced the choice of the people regarding ECOSWAM services.
The following socio-economic characteristics significantly influenced the choice of
households and business establishments: environmental knowledge, attitudes and
perceptions (EKAP); income; quantity of biodegradable waste; solid waste management
practices like recycling and composting; educational attainment of household head;
indigenous SWM beliefs; capitalization; and being a sole decision-maker on
expenditures. The study’s findings on the determinants of people’s choices of
ECOSWAM services are consistent with those of Jamal’s (EEPSEA 2002), Wertz
(1974) as cited by Jenkins (1993), Gottinger (1991), Bennagen (EEPSEA 2002) and
Schubeler (1996).
The WTP values for ECOSWAM services derived from the choice modeling
(CM) used in this study are slightly higher than the average WTP values of urbanized
cities like Iloilo and Naga, Philippines, taken from the WB-SWEEP study (1998) that
used the closed iterative contingent valuation method (CVM). The slight difference
could be due to inflation and the devaluation of the peso. This shows that people from
suburban municipalities are willing to pay almost the same user fees for ECOSWAM
services as people from urban and wealthier cities. This also shows that the estimates
from the CM and CVM methods are fairly similar. Thus, CM can be adopted to
determine the demand for ECOSWAM services in other local government units. Some
“tailor-fitting” is needed per LGU, such as studying the existing SWM system in order
to design the attributes and levels of the ECOSWAM services. This is one of the
strengths of the attribute-based methods.
The costs of ECOSWAM services for small municipalities like Tuba do not differ
much from those of big cities. Tuba’s unit costs per ton and per household served are
greater than those of bigger and more densely populated cities. Significant economies of
scale demonstrate that the overall cost per ton of waste disposal progressively decreases
as the capacity of the sanitary landfill site increases and the daily volume of waste
handled increases (DENR-NSWMC Waste Bulletin, 2001).
While the people of Tuba ranked improper solid waste disposal as the top
environmental problem, they were willing to pay user fees that could cover only about
22 to 35 percent of the costs of ECOSWAM services. Hence, the Tuba
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