SUSTAINABLE HYDERABAD PROJECT

THEMATIC SECTION | 11
the comparative nature of CE tasks makes decisions
easier for respondents, compared to
surveys where direct statements are required.
Third, the method is efficient in that very precise
and quantifiable findings can be collected
in a relatively compressed format. Fourth, with
a good sample selection and proper statistical
design, estimates are relatively reliable, as it is
easy to cover large shares of the target population.
Fifth, a CE task is more compelling to
respondents than answering simple, perhaps
boring, questions.
In order to illustrate this idea, the following
paragraph provides some background regarding
pilot project 5, “Implementing cooperative
and technical solutions to increase energy efficiency
in irrigation”, after which the motivation
for and conducting of a CE to inform project
implementation are explained.
Farmers in the project area who use electric
water pumps suffer from poor electricity quality
in terms of voltage fluctuations and restricted
power supply. To overcome these issues, IfG
together with the project partners decided to
provide capacitors (a small and inexpensive
technical equipment that can reduce motor
burn-outs and increase energy efficiency) to
the farmers. Additionally, assistance would be
provided to set up a water pump cooperative
for self-help, better internal organisation and
more negotiating power against the distribution
company. Even after interviewing several
farmers and experts, however, the project
implementation team still lacked precise and
representative information on the farmers’
preferences for different capacitor attributes,
especially non-technical ones like warranty
and capacitor costs. Further, it needed to be
determined whether farmers would be willing
to join the cooperative. In the end, it all depends
on the willingness of the stakeholders to
participate. If the stakeholders are not willing
to adopt the proposed changes, the project is
likely to fail. Sometimes, even small deviances
from a preferred application can prevent successful
implementation. In order to avoid falling
into this trap, it is helpful to find out
• whether farmers are at all willing to install
capacitors,
• whether farmers are willing to pay a price
to attain a capacitor,
• whether farmers would be interested in
joining the cooperative,
• to what extend a warranty would be appreciated
by the farmers, and
• how warranty, price and cooperative membership
are traded off and interact.
Answers to these questions can guide implementation,
especially in predicting what
will “work” or “fail”. For example, if farmers
are willing to pay for capacitors only when it
comes with a warranty, it would be fatal to
charge for capacitors that have no warranty.
Further, it is useful to investigate how much a
farmer would pay additionally for one year of
warranty.
As implied above, IfG conducted a CE to
answer these questions so as to help in calibrating
the intervention to maximise farmers’
benefits. The idea was put into practice in a
survey with 234 farmers from the intervention
villages and from neighbouring “control
group” villages in February 2012. The CE consisted
of three alternatives: “no capacitor”,
“only capacitor” and “capacitor and cooperative”.
The latter two alternatives comprised
two attributes, each having two levels. The
Always choose… Freq. Percent
alternative “no capacitor” 1 0.43 %
alternative “only capacitor” 2 0.85 %
alternative “capacitor and cooperative” 15 6.41 %
the cheaper alternative 26 11.11 %
the alternative with longer warranty 39 16.67 %
either cheaper price or longer warranty 43 18.38 %
not to any pattern 108 46.15 %
Table 1: Simple choices
Table 1: Simple Choices
attribute levels appeared in different combinations
between choice situations. The attributes
were “years of warranty” (level 1: no warranty,
level 2: five years warranty) and “investment
costs for capacitor” (level 1: no costs,
level 2: 300 INR). Figure 1 presents one out
of the 16 choice situations which were used in
the survey. After a detailed explanation of the
alternatives and attributes, each respondent
answered eight choice situations. The results
shed light on the questions raised above. First,
simple decision heuristics can be detected: a
respondent always chooses the same alternative
regardless of the levels of the attributes or
he always chooses the alternative where one
specific attribute is better. From table 1, one
can see that only one respondent always opted
against capacitors, while 15 respondents always
chose the alternative “capacitor and cooperative”,
26 respondents always chose the
alternative that was cheaper and 39 respondents
always opted for longer warranty. Another
43 respondents chose either based on the
cost or the warranty attribute, though it was
not possible to identify which of the attributes
was dominant due to design issues. Basically,
it seems that there is no general resistance towards
capacitors, even when it costs something
News
The BMBF Future Megacities
Newsletter was published online
in July 2012. Tanja Schäfer contributed
to the newsletter with
her short article “An Approach
to Create Resilient Transport
Systems in Hyderabad”.
The newsletter is available here:
http://future-megacities.org/
fileadmin/documents/newsletter/Megacities_Newsletter_
No2_2012_Internet.pdf
Figure 2: The Survey in Practice:
Presentation of choice sets to farmer