Willingness to Pay (WtP) Study Expert, MCC Sierra Leone WtP Study, Sierra Leone

Social Impact is a global development management consulting firm. We provide monitoring, evaluation, strategic planning, and capacity-building services to advance development effectiveness. We work across all development sectors, including democracy and governance, health and education, the environment, and economic growth. Since 1997, we have worked in over 100 countries for clients such as US government agencies, bilateral donors, multilateral development banks, foundations, and nonprofits.

Proposal Objective:

SI is pursuing an RFP to perform a new Sierra Leone Willingness to Pay (WtP) Study for MCC Sierra Leone to estimate the economic returns on proposed investments. This study requires collecting and analyzing revealed preference data from households, businesses, and institutions in Sierra Leone to assess:

• The potential economic benefit of the incremental value of using higher energy value and lower cost per unit of electric service for lighting, appliances, and machinery instead of alternative energy sources, such as generators, candles, kerosene lamps, charcoal, wood, and batteries.
• Households’ and firms’ WtP for more reliable electricity supply based on costs currently incurred from the unreliable supply.

In addition, the survey should collect relevant socio-economic data on surveyed households and communities, and relevant high-level information (e.g., sector, annual revenues, number of employees, gender of top manager, and investment levels) from surveyed businesses.

Position Description:

SI is seeking a consultant to serve as the WtP Study Expert for this WtP Study, who will be responsible for technical leadership in the design, testing, and refinement of the survey instruments and survey manuals, and the methodology for processing and analyzing the survey results. This position will be intermittent throughout the study. Work will be conducted in Sierra Leone.

Responsibilities:

• Responsible for providing technical leadership in the design, testing, and refinement of the survey instruments and manuals, and the methodology for processing and analyzing the survey results.
• Provide technical leadership in designing, testing, and refining the survey instruments and manuals.
• Provide technical leadership over the methodology for processing and analyzing survey results.

Qualifications:

• A Ph.D. in economics, public policy, or another relevant field OR an advanced degree that exceeds the minimum experience requirements from bullet three below.
• Specific training in survey research methods and willingness to pay methodologies applied to the energy sector are required. Specific training revealed preference willingness to pay methodology is preferred.
• Five (5) years of experience designing and implementing multiple survey research projects and/or field experiments are required. At least two of these projects should involve a willingness to pay methodologies in the energy sector, and at least one should have taken place in a similar context to Sierra Leone.
• Specific experience with at least one revealed preference willingness to pay study is preferred, and experience with such a study in a similar context to Sierra Leone is desirable.
• Familiarity with and experience using best practices in survey instrument design and survey protocol development to reduce error and bias.
• Experience designing surveys implemented using electronic data collection tools.
• Experience designing surveys implemented in a low-income country.
• Experience analyzing WtP survey data to generate outputs necessary for economic analysis estimates is required. Experience performing such analyses using revealed preference methodologies is preferred. Familiarity with customer damage functions is preferred.
• Fluency in oral and written English.
• Excellent communication and organization skills, and experience working with diverse teams and stakeholders.
• Experience in West Africa, Anglophone West Africa, or Sierra Leone is strongly preferred (in increasing order of preference).