Publication
Title
Look who's talking : explaining water-related information sharing and demand for action among Ugandan villagers
Author
Abstract
Many national water policies propagate community-based participatory approaches to overcome weaknesses in supply-driven rural water provision, operation, and maintenance. Citizen involvement is thought to stimulate bottom-up accountability and broaden the information base, which may enrich design and implementation processes and foster improved water accessibility and sustainability. Practices on the ground, however, are embedded in socio-political realities which mediate possible beneficial effects of participatory approaches. This paper builds on full social network data collected in a Ugandan village to study the social and political reality of two distinct levels of participation, i.e. local information sharing among citizens and a more active appeal to fellow citizens to improve water services. We use Logistic Regression Quadratic Assignment Procedure to explore what type of actor and network traits influence information sharing and whether the same factors are in play in the demand for action to remedy water-related problems. Whereas social aspects (social support relations) and homophily (using the same water source, the same gender) play an important role in information sharing, it is the educational level, in particular, of the villager who is called upon that is important when villagers demand action. Our findings also demonstrate that those most in need of safe water do not mobilize their information sharing ties to demand for action. This indicates that building local water policies and practice exclusively on locally existing demand for action may fail to capture the needs of the most deprived citizens.
Language
English
Source (journal)
Environmental management. - New York
Publication
New York : 2016
ISSN
0364-152X
DOI
10.1007/S00267-016-0760-9
Volume/pages
58 :5 (2016) , p. 780-796
ISI
000385174700003
Pubmed ID
27612853
Full text (Publisher's DOI)
Full text (open access)
Full text (publisher's version - intranet only)
UAntwerpen
Faculty/Department
Research group
Project info
Beyond the blueprint: in search of successful informal monitoring and evaluation arrangements in Rwanda and Uganda.
Publication type
Subject
Affiliation
Publications with a UAntwerp address
External links
Web of Science
Record
Identifier
Creation 21.09.2016
Last edited 09.10.2023
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