Nonpayment of water bills in Guatemala: Dissatisfaction or inability to pay?

Abstract

This paper investigates nonpayment behavior in Guatemala. Determinants of nonpayment behavior are identified through zero‐inflated negative binomial regression models in order to take into account particular distributional characteristics of the amount of outstanding payments. Findings indicate that nonpayment behavior is a demonstration of consumer dissatisfaction with current water services. The amount of outstanding bill payments also responds to system unreliability. Results also suggest that nonpayment behaviors are more prominent in community‐managed systems than in municipal systems. No evidence was found on a potential relationship between nonpayment behavior and household income. Policy implications are discussed.

Intermittent Domestic Water Supply: A Critical Review and Analysis of Causal-Consequential Pathways

“…Others define intermittency as water arriving at intervals of hours, days, or weeks [21,35]. While some studies are very clear about the service conditions [115], many studies do not provide enough information to characterize water delivery service. For a consumer, the interval of water delivery and the reliability of that interval matter greatly [44,50,125], yet most studies use one of the above terms without precisely defining it or describing the relevant water delivery regime.…”

From intermittent to continuous service: Costs, benefits, equity and sustainability of water system reforms in Hubli-Dharwad, India

“…Additionally, conversion to CWS may not eliminate the behaviors usually associated with 'coping': inconvenient access points or the continuation of established practices could complicate the assessment of household impacts (Burt & Ray, 2014). On the other hand, (some) evidence suggests that higher-quality service and customer satisfaction lead to higher payment of water bills (Vásquez, 2015;Kayaga, Franceys, & Sansom, 2004).…”

Methods to detect replication-dependent and replication-independent DNA structure-induced genetic instability

“…Furthermore, DNA is unwrapped from histone cores during replication, which results in negative supercoiling of the duplex DNA, as required for the formation of many types of non-B DNA structures. DNA helicases associated with the replication machinery can resolve some types of non-B DNA structures formed in front of the progressing DNA polymerase, but not in all cases [7, 28]. If the non-B DNA structures are left unresolved, then they can cause impediments to DNA polymerases, resulting in replication fork collapse and DNA double-strand breaks (DSBs) [29].…”