Water system sustainability in rural Sub-Saharan Africa : participation, sense of ownership, and performance
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- Almost one out of two people living in rural Sub-Saharan Africa lack access to an improved drinking water source. Failure of installed infrastructure contributes substantially to the persistently low level of water access in this region. This dissertation identifies factors that explain water system sustainability, with a particular focus on the role of community participation in planning and construction of water systems. First, the relationship between different forms of community participation and handpump sustainability is explored using data collected within 200 rural communities in Ghana. Next, a composite measure for households' sense of ownership for their water system is developed using principal components analysis and then tested against empirical data collected from 1140 households across 50 rural Kenyan villages. This study establishes the first known empirical referent for users' sense of ownership for their water system, and finds that certain types of participation during project planning and construction enhance sense of ownership. Moreover, sense of ownership among users is inversely related to that of water committee members, and the correlates of sense of ownership differ for the two groups. These findings challenge the bulk of published literature on rural water planning in developing countries, which suggests a consistent and positive relationship between community participation, households' sense of ownership for the system, and system sustainability.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic; electronic resource; remote |
| Extent | 1 online resource. |
| Publication date | 2012 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Associated with | Marks, Sara Jane |
|---|---|
| Associated with | Stanford University, Civil & Environmental Engineering Department. |
| Primary advisor | Davis, Jennifer |
| Thesis advisor | Davis, Jennifer |
| Thesis advisor | Freyberg, David L |
| Thesis advisor | Hall, Ralph P |
| Advisor | Freyberg, David L |
| Advisor | Hall, Ralph P |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | Sara Jane Marks. |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. |
| Thesis | Ph.D. Stanford University 2012 |
| Location | electronic resource |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2012 by Sara Jane Marks
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).
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