Measuring the effect of iDE’s sanitation marketing intervention on latrine coverage and health in Cambodia

Independent evaluation of the International Development Enterprises (iDE) Sanitation Marketing Scale-Up (SMSU) programme in Cambodia to improve water and sanitation for the rural poor.

The programme had three broad aims:

1. to encourage latrine producers to produce improved (pour-flush) latrines
2. to educate communities on the benefits of improved latrines
3. to mediate sales between households and latrine producers

The SMSU 1.0 programme ran from August 2011 to October 2014 facilitating sales of over 141,000 latrines in rural areas, although 37 per cent of these were uninstalled nine months after delivery.

Intervention description

The Capstone Team was invited to assist in building an econometric model that captures iDE's latrine market intervention’s effect on increasing latrine coverage and improving health outcomes for rural Cambodian children under-5. They sought answers to three questions:

1. did iDE’s intervention lead to increases in latrine coverage
2. did iDE’s intervention lead to improvements in health
3. what is the relationship between latrine coverage and health?

Evidence methodology

This report addresses the three research questions by employing a range of evaluation methods: the difference-in-difference model and a fixed effects model.

The data available for this analysis included primary data collected by iDE during its annual village-level Latrine Count Survey and secondary data from the Cambodia Socio-Economic Survey (CSES) and the USAID-funded Demographic Health Survey (DHS).