To drink or not to drink (tap water)? The impact of environmental quality on consumer’s choices.

Surveys regularly report that a large share of the French population declares not to drink tap water. However, tap water has a very good sanitary quality, is regularly and strictly controlled, and is approximately one hundred times cheaper than bottled water. We attempt here to identify which factors are affecting households’ decision to drink (or not) tap water. Using a sample of French households, we show that both the socioeconomic characteristics of the household (income, education, rural or urban residence), and the surrounding quality of the environment (measured here by the raw water quality) are important in the households’ decision process to drink tap water