Disposição a pagar por métodos de cobrança da água bruta no perímetro irrigado dos tabuleiros de Russas, Ceará-Br

Abstract

The implementation of raw water charging system has been a challenge for the water resource managers in the Northeast of Brazil. This study aimed to investigate the irrigator’s preferences towards the raw water for irrigation using the stated preference approach, named Choice Experiment. To do that we built raw water charging scenarios and choice sets using four attributes: the guarantee of minimum water supply, transaction of water use rights, method of raw water charging and water tariff. The experimental design was composed of nine scenarios, 36 choice sets, distributed into six blocks with six choice sets each. The irrigation profile, attitudes and choice data were gathered by a semi structured questionnaire applied to 30 small lot irrigator owners in the Irrigation District of Tabuleiros de Russas (PITR), Ceará. Based on two conditional and mixed logit models, we observed that the increased guarantee in the water supply affected significantly the irrigator choices for charging schemes and that their marginal willingness to pay to shift from the current system to another one was estimated around R$ 2,00/1.000 m3. mês.