  Rural electrification initiatives worldwide frequently encounter financial
planning challenges due to a lack of reliable market insights. This research
delves into the preferences and marginal willingness to pay (mWTP) for upfront
electricity connections in rural and peri-urban areas of Nigeria. We
investigate discrete choice experiment data gathered from 3,599 households and
1,122 Small to Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) across three geopolitical zones
of Nigeria, collected during the 2021 PeopleSuN project survey phase. Employing
conditional logit modeling, we analyze this data to explore preferences and
marginal willingness to pay for electricity connection. Our findings show that
households prioritize nighttime electricity access, while SMEs place a higher
value on daytime electricity. When comparing improvements in electricity
capacity to medium or high-capacity, SMEs exhibit a sharp increase in
willingness to pay for high-capacity, while households value the two options
more evenly. Preferences for the electricity source vary among SMEs, but
households display a reluctance towards diesel generators and a preference for
the grid or solar solutions. Moreover, households with older heads express
greater aversion to connection fees, and male-headed households show a stronger
preference for nighttime electricity compared to their female-headed
counterparts. The outcomes of this study yield pivotal insights to tailor
electrification strategies for rural Nigeria, emphasizing the importance of
considering the diverse preferences of households and SMEs.
