Listening to households before reforming a city water utility

What is shaping water

Water research covers households, utilities, purifier brands and development programmes. Access, quality, reliability and trust in the source decide how people use and pay for water.

• Many households combine several water sources
• Trust in water quality drives purifier adoption
• Utilities are judged on reliability and billing

A municipal water utility, working in A large city in Maharashtra. Client identity is withheld to protect confidentiality.

Organisation

A municipal water utility

Sector

Water

Team engaged

Market Research

Services

Government research, Quantitative research, Offline data collection (CAPI)

The utility planned to move towards continuous water supply and metered billing, but many households received water for only a few hours a day and distrusted the utility. Officials needed to understand current experiences, coping costs and willingness to accept change before designing the reform.

• Deliver on the brief: listening to households before reforming a city water utility.
• Understand the views, needs and behaviour of households.
• Produce results that can be compared across groups and locations.
• Give the client evidence it can act on within 10 weeks.

The work focused on 4,000 households.

• households4,000

Audiences we typically reach in water

HouseholdsUtility customersPurifier buyers and ownersCommunity water committeesWASH programme beneficiaries

Coverage: A large city in Maharashtra. Market: India.

• India

A structured quantitative design, so results could be compared across groups, locations and time.

1. 1Brief
2. 2Household survey
3. 3Ward-level analysis
4. 4Supply diaries
5. 5Insight

Interviewers surveyed households in every ward about supply timings, pressure, quality, storage, tanker purchases, billing and complaints. A sample of households kept a two-week diary of supply hours, giving more accurate data than recall. Results were analysed by ward and housing type, including informal settlements that are often missed.

Government researchQuantitative researchOffline data collection (CAPI)

households

4,000

• Respondents were selected across A large city in Maharashtra using quotas set in advance for each location and respondent type, so no single area or group dominated.

supply diaries

200

• Trained local-language interviewers conducted interviews in person on tablets (CAPI), with time and location recorded for every interview.

• Back-checks on a share of completed interviews
• Time and location checks on field interviews
• Supervisor accompaniment in the field
• Logic and range checks on the final data
• Work carried out under our ISO 20252 quality procedures

• Cross-tabulation by key groups and locations
• Significance testing on the differences that mattered

• Households in some wards spent significant amounts on tankers and storage, and many said they would accept metering if supply became reliable.

Diaries captured the reality of intermittent supply far better than questions about averages.

• Build on the core insight: diaries captured the reality of intermittent supply far better than questions about averages.
• Focus effort where the evidence was strongest: households in some wards spent significant amounts on tankers and storage, and many said they would accept metering if supply became reliable.
• Re-measure after the changes to confirm the effect.

• The utility sequenced its reform ward by ward, starting where supply improvements were feasible, and used the findings in its public communication about metering.

What changed in the business as a result of the work. Impact is described qualitatively.

• Insight report and management presentation
• Cleaned data file and data tables
• Evaluation findings with programme recommendations

• Repeat the measure after changes are in place to track progress.
• A natural follow-on question: how do households source and store water?