IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/soceps/v79y2022ics0038012121001324.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Measuring the quality of service of water companies: A two-stage goal programming synthetic index proposal

Author

Listed:
  • Molinos-Senante, María
  • Delgado-Antequera, Laura
  • Gómez, Trinidad

Abstract

Quality of service (QS) is one of the most important parameters for evaluating the performance of water companies. It is a multidimensional concept that encompasses several performance indicators, with synthetic indicators that provide useful evaluation tools. Drinking water provision and wastewater treatment are basic services for which there is a series of minimum requirements that all water companies must meet. Under this premise, this study proposes a novel synthetic indicator to evaluate the QS of water companies in two stages. First, the non-compliance index was estimated, which provides information on the degree of non-compliance for essential indicators. Second, based on the goal programming approach, each water company's strengths and weaknesses were computed to generate a QS index with rankings. The index was then tested empirically on a sample of 24 water companies in Chile based on 10 initial indicators (of which three are considered essential indicators). Overall, 37.5% of the water companies did not meet the thresholds delineated for the essential indicators. Moreover, only five water companies had a positive QS index (i.e., their strengths were greater than their weaknesses). A scenario analysis evaluated the impact of weight allocation on the QS of water companies and their ranking. The ranking of water companies varied depending on the weights allocated to the initial indicators, demonstrating the importance of delineating regulator preferences when assessing QS.

Suggested Citation

  • Molinos-Senante, María & Delgado-Antequera, Laura & Gómez, Trinidad, 2022. "Measuring the quality of service of water companies: A two-stage goal programming synthetic index proposal," Socio-Economic Planning Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 79(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:soceps:v:79:y:2022:i:c:s0038012121001324
    DOI: 10.1016/j.seps.2021.101140
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0038012121001324
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.seps.2021.101140?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. Renato Vivas & Ângelo Sant’anna & Karla Esquerre & Francisco Freires, 2019. "Measuring Sustainability Performance with Multi Criteria Model: A Case Study," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(21), pages 1-13, November.
    2. Pinto, F.S. & Costa, A.S. & Figueira, J.R. & Marques, R.C., 2017. "The quality of service: An overall performance assessment for water utilities," Omega, Elsevier, vol. 69(C), pages 115-125.
    3. D’Inverno, Giovanna & Carosi, Laura & Romano, Giulia, 2021. "Environmental sustainability and service quality beyond economic and financial indicators: A performance evaluation of Italian water utilities," Socio-Economic Planning Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 75(C).
    4. Jayanath Ananda & Nicholas Pawsey, 2019. "Benchmarking service quality in the urban water industry," Journal of Productivity Analysis, Springer, vol. 51(1), pages 55-72, February.
    5. Rosa Puertas & Luisa Marti, 2019. "Sustainability in Universities: DEA-GreenMetric," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(14), pages 1-17, July.
    6. Lihui Zhang & He Xin & Zhinan Kan, 2019. "Sustainability Performance Evaluation of Hybrid Energy System Using an Improved Fuzzy Synthetic Evaluation Approach," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(5), pages 1-19, February.
    7. Isidro F. Aguillo & Judit Bar-Ilan & Mark Levene & José Luis Ortega, 2010. "Comparing university rankings," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 85(1), pages 243-256, October.
    8. David Saal & David Parker & Tom Weyman-Jones, 2007. "Determining the contribution of technical change, efficiency change and scale change to productivity growth in the privatized English and Welsh water and sewerage industry: 1985–2000," Journal of Productivity Analysis, Springer, vol. 28(1), pages 127-139, October.
    9. Blancas, Francisco J. & Caballero, Rafael & González, Mercedes & Lozano-Oyola, Macarena & Pérez, Fátima, 2010. "Goal programming synthetic indicators: An application for sustainable tourism in Andalusian coastal counties," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 69(11), pages 2158-2172, September.
    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. Vilarinho, Hermilio & Pereira, Miguel Alves & D’Inverno, Giovanna & Nóvoa, Henriqueta & Camanho, Ana S., 2024. "Water Utility Service Quality Index: A customer-centred approach for assessing the quality of service in the water sector," Socio-Economic Planning Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 92(C).
    2. Sofiane, Boukhari & Dounia, Mrad & Sabri, Dairi & Tarek, Khoualdia & Yassine, Djebbar, 2023. "Utilizing a combined Delphi-FAHP-TOPSIS technique to assess the effectiveness of the water supply service in Algeria," Socio-Economic Planning Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 90(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. Vilarinho, Hermilio & D’Inverno, Giovanna & Nóvoa, Henriqueta & Camanho, Ana S., 2023. "Performance analytics for regulation in retail water utilities: Guiding asset management by identifying peers and targets," Utilities Policy, Elsevier, vol. 82(C).
    2. Goh, Kim Huat & See, Kok Fong, 2021. "Measuring the productivity growth of Malaysia's water sector: Implications for regulatory reform," Utilities Policy, Elsevier, vol. 71(C).
    3. Maziotis, Alexandros & Molinos-Senante, Maria, 2022. "The impact of model specification and environmental variables on measuring the overall technical efficiency of water and sewerage services: Evidence from Chile," Structural Change and Economic Dynamics, Elsevier, vol. 61(C), pages 191-198.
    4. Mocholi-Arce, Manuel & Sala-Garrido, Ramon & Molinos-Senante, Maria & Maziotis, Alexandros, 2021. "Water company productivity change: A disaggregated approach accounting for changes in inputs and outputs," Utilities Policy, Elsevier, vol. 70(C).
    5. Vilarinho, Hermilio & D’Inverno, Giovanna & Nóvoa, Henriqueta & Camanho, Ana S., 2023. "The measurement of asset management performance of water companies," Socio-Economic Planning Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 87(PA).
    6. Mocholi-Arce, Manuel & Sala-Garrido, Ramon & Molinos-Senante, Maria & Maziotis, Alexandros, 2021. "Performance assessment of water companies: A metafrontier approach accounting for quality of service and group heterogeneities," Socio-Economic Planning Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 74(C).
    7. D’Inverno, Giovanna & Carosi, Laura & Romano, Giulia, 2021. "Environmental sustainability and service quality beyond economic and financial indicators: A performance evaluation of Italian water utilities," Socio-Economic Planning Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 75(C).
    8. Vilarinho, Hermilio & Pereira, Miguel Alves & D’Inverno, Giovanna & Nóvoa, Henriqueta & Camanho, Ana S., 2024. "Water Utility Service Quality Index: A customer-centred approach for assessing the quality of service in the water sector," Socio-Economic Planning Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 92(C).
    9. Gregorio Rius-Sorolla & Sofía Estelles-Miguel & Carlos Rueda-Armengot, 2020. "Multivariable Supplier Segmentation in Sustainable Supply Chain Management," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(11), pages 1-16, June.
    10. Víctor Pérez & Alain Hernández & Flor Guerrero & María Amparo León & Christian Luiz Silva & Rafael Caballero, 2016. "Sustainability Ranking for Cuban Tourist Destinations Based on Composite Indexes," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 129(1), pages 425-444, October.
    11. Mocholi-Arce, Manuel & Sala-Garrido, Ramon & Molinos-Senante, Maria & Maziotis, Alexandros, 2023. "Profit productivity change in the English and Welsh water sector: Impact of the price reviews," Utilities Policy, Elsevier, vol. 82(C).
    12. El Gibari, Samira & Gómez, Trinidad & Ruiz, Francisco, 2018. "Evaluating university performance using reference point based composite indicators," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 12(4), pages 1235-1250.
    13. Hyejin Park & Han Woo Park, 2018. "Two-side face of knowledge building using scientometric analysis," Quality & Quantity: International Journal of Methodology, Springer, vol. 52(6), pages 2815-2836, November.
    14. Walter, Matthias & Cullmann, Astrid & von Hirschhausen, Christian & Wand, Robert & Zschille, Michael, 2009. "Quo vadis efficiency analysis of water distribution? A comparative literature review," Utilities Policy, Elsevier, vol. 17(3-4), pages 225-232, September.
    15. Ghulam, Yaseen, 2021. "Institutions and firms’ technological changes and productivity growth," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 171(C).
    16. Mike Thelwall, 2017. "Judit Bar-Ilan: information scientist, computer scientist, scientometrician," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 113(3), pages 1235-1244, December.
    17. Henriques, Alda A. & Camanho, Ana S. & Amorim, Pedro & Silva, Jaime G., 2020. "Performance benchmarking using composite indicators to support regulation of the Portuguese wastewater sector," Utilities Policy, Elsevier, vol. 66(C).
    18. Michael Zschille, 2012. "Consolidating the Water Industry: An Analysis of the Potential Gains from Horizontal Integration in a Conditional Efficiency Framework," Discussion Papers of DIW Berlin 1187, DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research.
    19. Andrej David & Peter Mako & Jan Lizbetin & Patrik Bohm, 2021. "The Impact of an Environmental Way of Customer’s Thinking on a Range of Choice from Transport Routes in Maritime Transport," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(3), pages 1-23, January.
    20. Farsi, Mehdi & Filippini, Massimo, 2009. "An analysis of cost efficiency in Swiss multi-utilities," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 31(2), pages 306-315, March.

    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:soceps:v:79:y:2022:i:c:s0038012121001324. 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: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/seps .

    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.