Water for the urban poor: Balancing financial and social objectives through service differentiation in the Kenyan water sector

Klaas Schwartz, Mireia Tutusaus and Elisa Savelli

Utilities Policy, 2017, vol. 48, issue C, 22-31

Abstract: Kenyan water utilities face a challenge of balancing the financial objective of commercial viability with the social objective of service expansion. To achieve this, they employ service differentiation in which different categories of consumers receive different levels of service. Although service differentiation has achieved results, it reflects a prioritization of financial objectives over social objectives and raises three particular concerns. First, service differentiation reflects a withdrawal of the utility from core service provision responsibilities. Second, it results in inequitable service provision. Finally, it may lock low-income consumers into a low level of service.

Keywords: Water supply; Urban poor; Service differentiation; Kenya (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0957178717300048
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:juipol:v:48:y:2017:i:c:p:22-31

DOI: 10.1016/j.jup.2017.08.001

Access Statistics for this article

Utilities Policy is currently edited by Beecher, Janice

More articles in Utilities Policy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().