Individual Perceptions and the Performance of Community-Based Drinking Water Organizations

This paper analyses the underlying factors affecting people’s satisfaction with drinking water provided by community-based organizations in rural Costa Rica. These organizations provide water to more than 60 percent of the country’s rural population, but there is great disparity in the quality of water provided. Using an ordered Probit regression and data from 41 villages, we studied how characteristics of the water supply infrastructure, the governance structure, and the attributes of local people affect consumers’perception of water quality at home. We found that size and age of the infrastructure, accountability mechanisms, public disclosure of information, and demand responsiveness, as well as the human capital of the members of the local water committee, are the main predictors of the capacity of local organizations to satisfy consumers’ perceptions of water quality.