Abstract
This paper examines the impact of anticipated duration for drinking water contamination on avoidance behavior. Differences in anticipated duration are based upon the type of public information provided to water customers: short-term boil water advisories (BWAs) versus long-term public notifications based upon Safe Drinking Water Act (SWDA) health-based violations. Avoidance behavior is measured by weekly bottled water sales at the county level in Kentucky. Our results confirm that BWAs have a much larger impact on bottled water sales than SWDA notifications. Bottled water sales increase by an estimated 3.8% in response to a 10-percentage point increase in population affected by BWAs during the week. This change in bottled water sales, however, represents a fraction of total avoidance behavior costs. Thus, bottled water purchases should be considered a very lower bound estimate for avoidance behavior cost estimates from contamination episodes of drinking water.