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Several studies have examined the relationship between service quality and willingness to pay in many industries. However, this relationship has not been explored through the lens of customer perceived value and their willingness to pay for improving and sustaining water service. This study aims to examine the impact of technical and functional service quality dimensions on customer perceived value and assess the influence of customer perceived value and socio-economic factors on customers' willingness to pay for improving and sustaining the water service.

Technical service quality includes core water service such as water delivery and maintenance, while functional service quality refers to the appearance of facilities, employees’ dress, and communication. SERVQUAL questionnaire responses were collected from 333 Palestinian household customers. Cronbach’s alpha was conducted to measure internal consistency and convergent validity. Path analysis was utilized to evaluate a causal diagram by examining the relationships among the constructs.

The results showed that technical and functional service quality and relative price explain 52% of the customer perceived value variation. Additionally, the results revealed that customer perceived value, technical service quality, and relative price significantly impact the customer’s willingness to pay for improving and sustaining service. In contrast, the functional service quality and socio-economic factors have insignificant effects. These predictors explain 60% of the customer’s willingness to pay for improving and sustaining service.

The study suggests that water providers should prioritize improving and sustaining technical service quality to increase customer willingness to pay. Furthermore, they should be aware that other factors, such as employee appearance and politeness, are less influential in driving customers’ willingness to pay.

The study presents a water service improvement model that utilizes data from a developing country to assess the influence of perceived customer value, along with its dimensions, on the willingness to pay for improving and sustaining water service quality.

As demands on global water resources intensify, battles are emerging over water ownership and governance. Evidence to support opposing views is scarce, however, especially with respect to the impact of ownership on water quality. Using a data set of 168,823 municipal water systems in the United States from 2010 to 2014, we find evidence that stakeholder attention moderates the effect of ownership on compliance with drinking water quality standards. Private systems’ compliance improves more rapidly with system size, consistent with greater social movement pressure, while public systems’ compliance improves more rapidly with local educational attainment, consistent with greater responsiveness to stakeholder attention and concern.

Although access to safe drinking water is one of the most important health-related infrastructure programs in the world, drinking water remains a large problem in China today, especially in rural areas. Despite increased government investment in water resource protection and management, there is still an absence of academic studies that are able to document what path the investment has taken and whether it has had any tangible impact. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the impact of drinking water investment on drinking water in China.

The authors make use of nationally representative data from 2005 and 2012 to measure the impact of drinking water investment among 2,028 rural households in 101 villages across five provinces. Both ordinary least squares regression and probit regression are used to analyze the correlates and the impact of drinking water investment.

The authors demonstrate that water quality was likely a significant problem in 2004 but that China’s investment into drinking water appears to have resulted in initial improvements during the study period. The authors show that the most significant change came about in terms of hardware: villages that received more drinking water investment now have more piped tap water and more access to water treatment infrastructure (disinfecting and filtering facilities). High rates of rural resident satisfaction with drinking water suggest the effects of drinking water investment are being felt at the village level.

To the authors’ knowledge, this is the first empirical study on drinking water investment over time in rural China using nationally representative data.

The new campus of Tianjin University was designed, built and now operates following a green and sustainable concept. The campus’ eco-friendly water environment was formed by establishing a water recycling system. The campus is divided into three drainage sections based on the masterplan. Each drainage section adopts different methods of collecting, utilizing and discharging water according to specific conditions, aimed at achieving both high drainage capability and the efficient utilisation of rainwater. The campus was designed so runoff pollution is reduced through the utilisation of low-impact development methods, ensuring the quality of the recharge water. Through studying the fundamentals of treatment measures and models for simulating water quality, water circulation, constructed wetlands and pollution control of rain runoff, parameters for efficient water recycling could be mathematically forecast, ensuring that stakeholders can be continuously engaged in improving and preserving the water quality of landscaped water on campus. The overall system integrates a variety of measures being implemented into one cohesive entity, which contributes to establishing the sustainable and healthy water cycling system of the green campus.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the organizational change taking place within New Zealand water utilities as a result of implementing Total Quality Management (TQM) models (i.e. TQM experts’ teachings, ISO 9000 standards, and quality awards). Implementation was intended to enhance their performance and the quality of drinking water provided to the community.

This study was conducted by investigating the quality management system in three different case studies from the Waikato Region of New Zealand. The main study methodology is involved in methodological triangulation in which the researcher used more than one technique for data collection and data analysis. This paper reports on two of those techniques: face to face interviews conducted with the managers of the three case studies under investigation; and participant observation at the water treatment plants of the same three territorial local authorities (TLAs).

The comparative analysis drawn between the three different cases showed that two of the case studies are applying TQM models but at different stages, while the third case study is not implementing any of the TQM models. The difference between the performances of TLAs adopting a TQM model versus the TLAs who are not is related to their organizational strategy. This in turn has an impact on the sustainability of the quality of water provided to the community of the Waikato Region.

The paper emphasises the importance of breadth and depth of organizational change in the three TLAs in view of the following themes: training personnel in quality systems, customer satisfaction with water quality, purchasing equipment/chemicals, process control, inspection and testing, calibration, corrective and preventive action where drinking water is below standard (non‐conformance) and control of quality records.

The paper provides a useful case of TQM application in water utilities services.

Using a combination of the geographical information system (GIS) and the Canadian water quality index (WQI), the current study sought to provide a long-term general assessment of the water quality of the Shatt Al-Arab River (SAAR), focusing on its suitability for living organisms. Likewise, SPSS statistics was used to develop a nonlinear WQI regression model for the study area.

The study required four decades of data collection on some environmental characteristics of river water. After that, calculate the WQI and conduct the spatial analysis. Eight variables in total, including water temperature, dissolved oxygen, potential hydrogen ions, electrical conductivity (EC), biological oxygen demand, turbidity, nitrate and phosphate, were chosen to calculate the WQI.

Throughout the study periods, the WQI values varied from 55.2 to 79.83, falling into the categories of four (marginal) and three (fair), with the sixth period (2007–2008) showing the most decline. The present research demonstrated that the high concentration of phosphates, the high EC values, and minor changes in the other environmental factors are the major causes of the decline in water quality. The variations in ecological variables' overlap are a senior contributor to changes in water quality in general. Notably, using GIS in conjunction with the WQI has shown to be very effective in reducing the time and effort spent on investigating water quality while obtaining precise findings and information at the lowest possible expense. Calibration and validation of the developed model showed that this model had a perfect estimate of the WQI value. Due to its flexibility and impartiality, this study recommends using the proposed model to estimate and predict the WQI in the study area.

Even though the water quality of the SAAR has been the subject of numerous studies, this is the only long-term investigation that has been done to evaluate and predict its water quality.

An environmental impact assessment, EIA, was carried out before the final development and implementation of an irrigation project with a total area of 118,853 ha. in the Konya Plain located in Central Anatolia of Turkey, by the General Directorate of State Water Works (DSI). The objectives of the project are to supply water for irrigation and municipal demands by developing the Beysehir Lake, Suğla Lake Gembos basin and other water sources in the region, by conveying the excess water through an improved BSA channel to the Cumra‐Konya plains and to increase the irrigated agriculture. Evaluates six sub‐projects by considering construction and operation phases with respect to agricultural environmental problems, possible water quality impact, ecological changes and, finally, water budget and meteorological conditions. In order to reduce the possible adverse environmental impact of the originally considered design values, some significant changes were adopted according to results of this EIA study. Presents only the water quality aspect of the work.

The purpose of this paper is to uncover the customers’ concerns with the information disclosed in water services invoices and to analyse them with reference to the data quality dimensions usually proposed in the literature. In the context of services of general interest invoices are particularly relevant as a vehicle to convey information to all consumers.

Based on the principles of quality planning, the research uses a qualitative approach to identify the data quality requirements of water invoices. Customer voices were collected by means of focus groups and their meanings analysed using an affinity diagram.

Findings show that plain language efforts and strategies to enhance trust on the service provided need to be further reinforced. Consumers’ requirements together with the regulator recommendations also confirm the data quality dimensions identified in the literature.

This research highlights that avoiding technical language and making visible the consequences of different consumption levels on the amounts to be paid is essential when designing water invoices. Moreover, it emphasises that there is still room for improvement in the way the economic regulator performs its role in ensuring the provision of sound information.

This research addresses a literature gap by conducting a study on data quality requirements outside the context of information systems for organisations. The study is original because it looks at water invoices as a “product” that can be designed to meet the needs of their users.

Service quality and customer satisfaction influence the financial performance of service organizations. Hence, the purpose of this paper is to investigate the path relationship of service quality to customer satisfaction to financial sustainability in the water service sector, which is vital to the sustainable future of mankind. Further, these three interrelated constructs and their dimensions are clearly articulated.

SERVQUAL questionnaire responses were collected from 635 household families, and the financial sustainability indicators of 56 water providers were gathered as well. Cronbach's alpha and factor analysis were conducted to measure the internal consistency and convergent validity. Path analysis was utilized to evaluate the causal diagram by examining the relationships among service quality, customer satisfaction and financial sustainability using the AMOS software package.

The results showed that the five dimensions of service quality explain 58% of the customer satisfaction variation. The responsiveness, empathy, assurance and reliability have significant impact on the customer satisfaction where p < 0.05, while the tangible dimension has an insignificant effect. The results also revealed that customer satisfaction has a significant impact on the financial sustainability indicators of the water providers, where p = 0.000 for the debt collection ratio indicator, and p = 0.003 for the financial efficiency ratio indicator.

This research on financial sustainability is based on evidence about service quality and customer satisfaction in the Palestinian water sector. Future research on financial sustainability of the water sector may focus on the pricing mechanism and debt collection of water service.

The findings suggest that water providers should recognize the importance of service quality dimensions, which strengthen the customer satisfaction, which, in turn, is a significant driver for their financial sustainability. It is, therefore, sound to draw action-oriented managerial implications from these results.

The study adds to the literature of water service sector and is based on empirical evidence from primary data of household families and secondary data of water service providers from developing countries. This paper also contributes toward the strengthening of sustainability of the water service sector in Palestine – a worthy humanitarian cause. The study provides evidence useful for policy makers toward carving out policies aimed at strengthening the financial sustainability of the water service sector.