Know Thy Pipes: How Proxy Information Shapes Household Demand for Waterborne Lead Mitigation and Exposure Assessments
Presented by:
Siyuan Hu
Practice Job Talk
Department of Agricultural and Applied Economics
University of Wisconsin-Madison
Wednesday, October 7, 2026
12:00 pm-1:30 pm
Taylor-Hibbard Seminar Room (Rm103)
How do people respond to personalized, proxy-based information of environmental risks? We study this question in the context of lead exposure through drinking-water infrastructure. We first organize a stylized model highlighting the role of proxy information and separating the demand for mitigation from diagnostic defensive goods. We then test our conjectures via a survey field experiment across four U.S. cities. Linking households to official water-service-line inventories, we randomly disclose whether their residence is connected to a lead service line (LSL). Pre- and post-disclosure, we elicit beliefs about LSL presence, lead exposure, belief confidence, and incentive-compatible willingness to pay (WTP) for a lead-filtering pitcher and professional inspection. Households overestimate the prominence of lead service lines ex ante. Disclosure disciplines LSL belief towards official records and boosts confidence. Exposure belief also moves towards the records, while increasing confidence only among non-lead households. Demand for defensive investment responds asymmetrically, with lowered filter WTP for non-lead homes and increased inspection WTP for lead homes.