A structural equation modeling approach to factors influencing adoption of urban self-supply water system in Yala, Nigeria

Abstract

Self-supply systems are privately owned household water-supply systems designed to supplement or totally replace main water supplies. Self-supply system adoption as a protective response is now a common phenomenon in all urban centres in Nigeria. This is because the centralised public sector approach that aimed to provide urban water supply has failed in most of the cities. Studies have documented the public water supply problems, others have explored how citizens cope with the situation; but, there are few scholarly studies that focused on understanding and modelling protective behaviour among households with water supply inadequacies in the urban centres. This study, therefore, fills this gap by testing the Protection Motivation Theory, in the urban self-supply domain. Using mixed method research design; stratified sampling was employed to administer 695 household questionnaires from a total of 49,578 households. Twenty seven stakeholder questionnaires were purposefully administered, and 6 key-informant interviews were conducted. The data was analysed using Statistical Package for Social Sciences version 22 and Structural Equation Modelling with AMOS version 22. The result shows that self-supply is prevalent. Education, income, and housing ownership of respondents have a statistically significant relationship with self-supply system adoption, while household size, duration of stay and gender do not. The result also shows that social standing construct has no effect on adoption intention, while threat and coping appraisals constructs significantly predicted adaptive behavioural intentions which in turn significantly predicted actual adoption. The model accounted for 53% of the variance in intention to adopt and 28% of actual adoption of the self-supply system. The study also revealed ground water quality, self-supplysystem inventory, recognition and regulation as four broad concerns about the phenomenon. One of the implications of these results is the need for an appropriate combination of policy, legislation, and advocacy on self-supply. The study recommends the use of this empirical evidence as a basis to assimilate self-supply into the urban water supply management framework.