Valuing water service reliability and in-home water storage: A hedonic price model from Guatemala

Water service interruptions often impose considerable costs on water users, and lead more households to invest in in-home water storage infrastructure. Studying the value households assign to continuous water supply may help design more effective policies. Using a unique primary dataset from Guatemala City (n = 567), we estimate hedonic models of rental prices to derive marginal values of fewer water service interruptions and in-home water storage infrastructure. Results indicate that, on average, rental prices decrease by 0.7% with each day of water service interruptions and increase by 10% for housing units with storage infrastructure relative to those without it. •A hedonic model is used to estimate WTP for water service reliability and water storage in Guatemala City.•The model was estimated using primary data, which allowed controlling for 38 housing and neighborhood characteristics.•Each day of service interruption implies, on average, a 0.7% drop in rental prices.