IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/juipol/v41y2016icp67-76.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Analyzing water customer service expectations: A case study of the City of Guelph

Author

Listed:
  • Dziedzic, Rebecca M.
  • Karney, Bryan W.

Abstract

The present study applies a business model framework to a water utility using a case study. A survey was developed and conducted with residential water customers in the City of Guelph, ON, Canada, with the objective of assessing their expectations in order to improve the business. Preferences differed by user type, underlining the benefit of distinguishing between customer segments (or user types) and customizing messaging. Users were not aware of all services covered by their water bill, and although expecting high quality services they did not support rate increases. Stakeholder collaborations could be used to improve awareness, offer decentralized solutions, and resolve issues collectively.

Suggested Citation

  • Dziedzic, Rebecca M. & Karney, Bryan W., 2016. "Analyzing water customer service expectations: A case study of the City of Guelph," Utilities Policy, Elsevier, vol. 41(C), pages 67-76.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:juipol:v:41:y:2016:i:c:p:67-76
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jup.2016.06.002
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0957178716301400
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.jup.2016.06.002?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Stern, Jon, 2010. "Introducing competition into England and Wales water industry - Lessons from UK and EU energy market liberalisation," Utilities Policy, Elsevier, vol. 18(3), pages 120-128, September.
    2. Fiorenzo Franceschini & Maurizio Galetto & Elisa Turina, 2010. "Water and Sewage Service Quality: A Proposal of a New Multi-Questionnaire Monitoring Tool," Water Resources Management: An International Journal, Published for the European Water Resources Association (EWRA), Springer;European Water Resources Association (EWRA), vol. 24(12), pages 3033-3050, September.
    3. Beal, C.D. & Flynn, J., 2015. "Toward the digital water age: Survey and case studies of Australian water utility smart-metering programs," Utilities Policy, Elsevier, vol. 32(C), pages 29-37.
    4. M. Aini & A. Fakhru'l-Razi & K. Siew Suan, 2001. "Water Crisis Management: Satisfaction Level, Effect and Coping of the Consumers," Water Resources Management: An International Journal, Published for the European Water Resources Association (EWRA), Springer;European Water Resources Association (EWRA), vol. 15(1), pages 31-39, February.
    5. Sorada Tapsuwan & Michael Burton & Aditi Mankad & David Tucker & Murni Greenhill, 2014. "Adapting to Less Water: Household Willingness to Pay for Decentralised Water Systems in Urban Australia," Water Resources Management: An International Journal, Published for the European Water Resources Association (EWRA), Springer;European Water Resources Association (EWRA), vol. 28(4), pages 1111-1125, March.
    6. M. Yurdusev & A. Kumanlıoğlu, 2008. "Survey-Based Estimation of Domestic Water Saving Potential in the Case of Manisa City," Water Resources Management: An International Journal, Published for the European Water Resources Association (EWRA), Springer;European Water Resources Association (EWRA), vol. 22(3), pages 291-305, March.
    7. Hall, David & Katko, Tapio & Sanz Mulas, Andres & Lobina, Emanuele & de la Motte, Robin, 2007. "Decision-making and participation: The Watertime results," Utilities Policy, Elsevier, vol. 15(2), pages 151-159, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. DiCarlo, Morgan & Berglund, Emily Zechman & Kaza, Nikhil & Grieshop, Andrew & Shealy, Luke & Behr, Adam, 2023. "Customer complaint management and smart technology adoption by community water systems," Utilities Policy, Elsevier, vol. 80(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Allison Lassiter & Nicole Leonard, 2022. "A systematic review of municipal smart water for climate adaptation and mitigation," Environment and Planning B, , vol. 49(5), pages 1406-1430, June.
    2. Aditya Gupta & K. D. Kulat, 2018. "A Selective Literature Review on Leak Management Techniques for Water Distribution System," Water Resources Management: An International Journal, Published for the European Water Resources Association (EWRA), Springer;European Water Resources Association (EWRA), vol. 32(10), pages 3247-3269, August.
    3. Groothuis, Peter A. & Cockerill, Kristan & Mohr, Tanga McDaniel, 2015. "Water does not flow up hill: determinants of willingness to pay for water conservation measures in the mountains of western North Carolina," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 59(C), pages 88-95.
    4. Koo, A Mi & Kim, Ju-Hee & Yoo, Seung-Hoon, 2022. "Household willingness to pay for a smart water metering and monitoring system: The case of South Korea," Utilities Policy, Elsevier, vol. 79(C).
    5. Solis, Miriam & Bashar, Samira Binte, 2022. "Social equity implications of advanced water metering infrastructure," Utilities Policy, Elsevier, vol. 79(C).
    6. Lúcio Proença & Enedir Ghisi, 2013. "Assessment of Potable Water Savings in Office Buildings Considering Embodied Energy," Water Resources Management: An International Journal, Published for the European Water Resources Association (EWRA), Springer;European Water Resources Association (EWRA), vol. 27(2), pages 581-599, January.
    7. Liu, Ariane & Giurco, Damien & Mukheibir, Pierre, 2015. "Motivating metrics for household water-use feedback," Resources, Conservation & Recycling, Elsevier, vol. 103(C), pages 29-46.
    8. A. A. Hezri & Mohd. Nordin Hasan, 2006. "Towards sustainable development? The evolution of environmental policy in Malaysia," Natural Resources Forum, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 30(1), pages 37-50, February.
    9. Suhaimi Abdul-Talib & Chia-Chay Tay & Nor-Azazi Zakaria & Aminuddin Ab-Ghani & Lariyah Mohd-Sidek & Ngai-Weng Chan, 2014. "Water and Environmental Engineering: Embracing Multi-Disciplinary Approach through Advanced and Integrated Technologies for Sustainability," Journal of Asian Scientific Research, Asian Economic and Social Society, vol. 4(4), pages 194-206, April.
    10. Davis, Katrina J & Burton, Michael & Kragt, Marit E, 2016. "Discrete choice models: scale heterogeneity and why it matters," Working Papers 235373, University of Western Australia, School of Agricultural and Resource Economics.
    11. Bazilian, Morgan & Rogner, Holger & Howells, Mark & Hermann, Sebastian & Arent, Douglas & Gielen, Dolf & Steduto, Pasquale & Mueller, Alexander & Komor, Paul & Tol, Richard S.J. & Yumkella, Kandeh K., 2011. "Considering the energy, water and food nexus: Towards an integrated modelling approach," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 39(12), pages 7896-7906.
    12. Zhang, Fan & Polyakov, Maksym & Fogarty, James & Pannell, David, 2016. "The Capitalized Value of Rainwater Tanks in the Property Market of Perth, Australia," Working Papers 246968, University of Western Australia, School of Agricultural and Resource Economics.
    13. Pauline Pedehour & Marianne Lefebvre, 2023. "Combining digital technologies and incentives for water conservation: A Q-method study to understand preferences of French irrigators," Post-Print hal-04626643, HAL.
    14. Bhandari, Pratik & Creighton, Douglas & Gong, Jinzhe & Boyle, Carol & Law, Kris M.Y., 2023. "Evolution of cyber-physical-human water systems: Challenges and gaps," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 191(C).
    15. Liu, Ariane & Giurco, Damien & Mukheibir, Pierre & White, Stuart, 2016. "Detailed water-use feedback: A review and proposed framework for program implementation," Utilities Policy, Elsevier, vol. 43(PB), pages 140-150.
    16. Stern, Jon, 2012. "Developing upstream competition in the England and Wales water supply industry: A new approach," Utilities Policy, Elsevier, vol. 21(C), pages 1-16.
    17. Vanhala, Mika & Lu, Chien & Peltonen, Jaakko & Sundqvist, Sanna & Nummenmaa, Jyrki & Järvelin, Kalervo, 2020. "The usage of large data sets in online consumer behaviour: A bibliometric and computational text-mining–driven analysis of previous research," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 106(C), pages 46-59.
    18. Legg, Peter & Hatton MacDonald, Darla & Bark, Rosalind H. & Tocock, Mark & Tinch, Dugald & Rose, John M., 2020. "Cultural Values, Deep Mining Operations and the Use of Surplus Groundwater for Towns, Landscapes and Jobs," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 178(C).
    19. Amankwaa, Godfred & Heeks, Richard & Browne, Alison L., 2024. "Powershifts, organisational value, and water management: Digital transformation of Ghana's public water utility," Utilities Policy, Elsevier, vol. 87(C).
    20. Ayse Muhammetoglu & Yalçın Albayrak & Mustafa Bolbol & Simge Enderoglu & Habib Muhammetoglu, 2020. "Detection and Assessment of Post Meter Leakages in Public Places Using Smart Water Metering," Water Resources Management: An International Journal, Published for the European Water Resources Association (EWRA), Springer;European Water Resources Association (EWRA), vol. 34(9), pages 2989-3002, July.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:juipol:v:41:y:2016:i:c:p:67-76. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.sciencedirect.com/journal/utilities-policy .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.