Households' preference for reliable electricity: evidence from Hosanna and Durame towns of Southern Ethiopia

The reliable and renewable Electricity services have a substantial contribution to the environment, economy, and social cohesion. Nevertheless, in developing countries like Ethiopia, electricity services are irregular and unreliable. The study aims to analyze households' preference for reliable electricity services using primary data collected from 210 sample households in Hosanna and Durame towns of Southern Ethiopia. The households' preferences were analyzed using the choice experiment valuation technique. The study used both Conditional and Mixed Logit models to estimate the mean and marginal Willingness to Pay (WTP) for the attributes. The result suggests that households are willing to pay 230.84 ETB ($8.34), 229.34 ETB ($8.2), 2230 ETB ($8.3), and 230 ETB ($8.26) per month for improvement scenario one, two, three and four respectively in addition to the current monthly charge. Hence, the government should heavily invest in improving electricity transmission and distribution capacity besides upscaling the generation capacity.