A Community Based Program Promotes Sanitation

Arbeitspapier

Basic sanitation facilities are still lacking in large parts of the developing world, engendering serious environmental health risks. Interventions commonly deliver in-kind or cash subsidies to promote private toilet ownership. In this paper, we assess an intervention that provides information and behavioral incentives to encourage villagers in rural Mali to build and use basic latrines. Using an experimental research design and carefully measured indicators of use, we find a sizeable impact from this intervention: latrine ownership and use almost doubled in intervention villages, and open defecation was reduced by half. Our results partially attribute these effects to increased knowledge about cheap and locally available sanitation solutions. They are also associated with shifts in the social norm governing sanitation. Taken together, our findings, unlike previous evidence from other contexts, suggest that a progressive approach that starts with ending open defecation and targets whole communities at a time can help meet the new Sustainable Development Goal of ending open defecation.

Object Details

• Language: Englisch

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Series: IZA Discussion Papers ; No. 11446

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Wirtschaft ; Air Pollution; Water Pollution; Noise; Hazardous Waste; Solid Waste; Recycling ; Environmental Economics: Government Policy ; Positive Analysis of Policy Formulation and Implementation
• Subject: sanitation ; behavioral change ; community-based intervention ; social norm

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Geistige Schöpfung
• (who): Alzúa, María Laura ; Djebbari, Habiba ; Pickering, Amy J.
• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (who): Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)
• (where): Bonn
• (when): 2018

Further information

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/180464
• Last update: 10.03.2025, 11:43 AM CET