ASSESSING MONETARY VALUE OF THE NUISANCE CAUSED BY AN MSW LANDFILL

This paper describes the application of Conjoint Analysis for allocating a monetary value to the nuisance suffered by a community living near an MSW landfill . The willingness to pay (WTP) of the community to avoid the problems they face because of the landfill is considered as the money value they attach to their sufferings. Conjoint analysis is a method that elicits public preference s indirectly by creating a hypothetical situation before the respondents and answering questionnaires and analysis of the re spondent's data. The approach is illustrated by app lying it to an existing landfill site at Njeliyanparamba in Kozhikode district in Kerala (India). This case study demonstrates that the method can be applied easily and can be used in the overall cost calculation of a landfill, which includes the external cost in addition to the direct cost.