Look who's talking. explaining water-related information sharing and demand for action among ugandan villagers
Abstract
Many national water policies propagate community-based participatory approaches to overcome weaknesses in supply-driven rural water provision, operation, and maintenance. Citizen involvement is thought to stimulate bottom-up accountability and broaden the information base, which may enrich design and implementation processes and foster improved water accessibility and sustainability. Practices on the ground, however, are embedded in socio-political realities which mediate possible beneficial effects of participatory approaches. This paper builds on full social network data collected in a Ugandan village to study the social and political reality of two distinct levels of participation, i.e. local information sharing among citizens and a more active appeal to fellow citizens to improve water services. We use Logistic Regression Quadratic Assignment Procedure to explore what type of actor and network traits influence information sharing and whether the same factors are in play in the demand for action to remedy water-related problems. Whereas social aspects (social support relations) and homophily (using the same water source, the same gender) play an important role in information sharing, it is the educational level, in particular, of the villager who is called upon that is important when villagers demand action. Our findings also demonstrate that those most in need of safe water do not mobilize their information sharing ties to demand for action. This indicates that building local water policies and practice exclusively on locally existing demand for action may fail to capture the needs of the most deprived citizens.
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Within a household, there was substantial evidence that women as the primary carriers of water with prevalence estimates ranging from 61 to 79%.
“Moreover, within a household, there was substantial evidence that women as the primary carriers of water with prevalence estimates ranging from 61 to 79% (Hunter, 2006;Bornman et al., 2012;Holvoet et al., 2016;Geere et al., 2018).”
From A Systematic Review of Water and Gender Interlinkages: Assessing the Intersection With Health (2020) · cites this paper as Holvoet et al., 2016
Mean travel times for fetching water were as high as 54 min.
“Mean travel times for fetching water were as high as 54 min (Holvoet et al., 2016).”
From A Systematic Review of Water and Gender Interlinkages: Assessing the Intersection With Health (2020) · cites this paper as Holvoet et al., 2016
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- Authors
- Holvoet, N., Dewachter, S., & Molenaers, N.
- Affiliations
- University of Antwerp (BE)
- Corresponding author
- Holvoet, Nathalie
- Venue
- Environmental Management
- Published
- 2016-09-09
- Volume
- 58
- Issue
- 5
- Pages
- 780-796
- ISSN
- 0364-152X (ISSN-L)
- 1432-1009
- OpenAlex
- W2508311005
- Cited by
- 16
- References
- 56
- Citations by year
- 2026: 1 · 2025: 2 · 2024: 2 · 2023: 3 · 2022: 1 · 2020: 1 · 2019: 1 · 2018: 3 · 2017: 2
- FWCI
- 1.19
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Environmental Management (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Funders
- Flemish Research Fund (FWO) (G050613N)
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Water Science and Technology › Water Resource Management and Quality
- Social Sciences › Political Science and International Relations › Water Governance and Infrastructure
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Water Science and Technology › Environmental Science and Water Management
- Keywords
- information sharing, social networks, homophily, social support, educational attainment, gender, water access inequality, water policy, Uganda
- MeSH terms
- Conservation of Natural Resources, Humans, Rural Population, Social Support, Uganda, Water Supply, Information Dissemination, Environmental Policy, Water Resources
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