Abstract
Lead exposure from drinking water remains a critical public health concern in the U.S., primarily driven by lead service lines (LSLs)—lead pipes connecting water mains to buildings. Because LSL inventories offer only a proxy for household-level exposure, as tap water lead levels vary with pipe condition and corrosion control, we are motivated to investigate the following three questions. (1) How does receiving public information that serves as a proxy for pollution exposure affect individuals’ beliefs about personal exposure and confidence in those beliefs?
(2) How does it affect willingness to pay (WTP) for mitigation measures? (3) How does it affect WTP for individualized exposure assessments?
Leveraging the newly released LSL inventories, we conduct a survey experiment to study how receiving LSL information shapes perception of exposure and demand for mitigation and individualized exposure assessment. Survey participants are randomly assigned to receive either general EPA information (control) or additional information on whether their residential building has an LSL (treatment). Participants in the treatment arm are explicitly told that the LSL information is extracted from a city government database. The study measures key outcomes before and after the intervention: beliefs about LSL presence in their residential building, beliefs about tap water lead levels, confidence in these beliefs, WTP for lead-filtering pitchers, WTP for professional tap water lead testing, and WTP for pipe replacement.