Spatial Environment and Open Defecation: In Pursuit of Social Valuation of Sanitation Ecosystem Services

This article examines the social valuation of the external environment used for open defecation (OD). For this, we distinguish between the necessity-driven OD hypothesis that emanates from the reasoning of scarcity valuation of suitable open spaces used for OD (i.e., as the last resort option) owing to resource constraints preventing toilet adoption and the opportunity-driven OD hypothesis, which contends that it is the availability of suitable spaces per se that attracts people to defecate in the open. We geolocate 283 major OD sites in 175 villages of Purulia district (West Bengal, India), assess their environmental parameters, and propose the OD Suitability Index (ODSI). We linked the village-wise ODSI with social data from structured interviews in 1,240 households practicing OD to investigate the social valuation of the spatial environment concerning OD (specific type of sanitation ecosystem services). Results reveal that the perceived importance of the availability of suitable space for OD is negatively related to the ODSI measure, implying that people acknowledge the scarcity value of suitable space for OD due to the absence of other options rather than its abundance per se. Besides, we also showed that the perceived resource shortages have an objective basis and are negatively related to household income. These findings support the contention that the widespread occurrence of OD in the studied region is best explained by necessity-driven OD rather than the opportunity-driven OD argument. Thus, addressing the resource constraints should be prioritized over (prior to) sanctioning people practicing OD.