A Nonparametric Welfare Analysis via a Randomized Conjoint Field Experiment: an Application to Water Quality Improvement and the Floating Settlements on Inlay Lake, Myanmar

This study proposes a new approach to survey-based empirical welfare analysis, which combines a new design of the conjoint experiment of Hainmueller et al. (2014) and a non-parametric rational choice model. We focus on the welfare impact of a multi-attribute policy and report the identification result of the marginal component effect on the distribution of willingness-to-pay. As an illustration, the paper evaluates a water improvement policy package for the not previously analyzed floating settlements on Inlay Lake, Myanmar. Our estimation result shows that the average surplus gain from the lake water quality improvement is at least as large as 5.9% of the average annual per capita income of those on the lake. Moreover, attributes such as toilet provision have a clear welfare effect.