Abstract
Recent advances in mobile technologies, especially in the utility payment space, are having an increasingly profound impact on our daily lives and offer advantageous services in the utility sectors. This paper examines the prevalence and patterns of customer uptake of an electronic water payment (EWP) system and its implications for water delivery in the Tema Metropolitan Area, Ghana. Data for the study comprised a survey of 250 utility customers and the review of a 12-month water use and customer payment database from a water supply company. Results indicate that although customers were aware of EWP’s existence, overall uptake was very low. EWP awareness and intention to use EWP were not significantly associated with customers’ gender, phone/mobile money ownership, educational status, and water usage. However, age, employment status, income, and means of receiving monthly bills were found to be statistically different in relation to the awareness of EWP. These findings offer several implications for water service and utility providers to market mobile payment solutions and to increase the consumer uptake of these services and payment options.
Highlights
Urban water service provision is becoming increasingly challenging as a result of escalating demands from population growth, urbanisation, and climate change [1,2,3]
This paper is part of a larger study [27] that was conducted between June and July 2018 examining the adoption of electronic water payment among stakeholders in urban Ghana
The study was conducted in the Tema Metropolitan Area (the Tema region used in this study was based on GWCL boundaries and demarcation rather than the political boundary extent), situated 30 kilometres east of Accra, the capital city of Ghana [28]
Summary
Urban water service provision is becoming increasingly challenging as a result of escalating demands from population growth, urbanisation, and climate change [1,2,3]. In sub-Saharan Africa, geographically-limited infrastructures in an era of urban expansion, insufficient operational financing to serve low income populations, and high levels of water loss are the factors limiting improved water provision [6,7,8]. Many studies have reported that operational inefficiencies, i.e., poor management and infrastructure that affect urban utility providers in Africa, account for about. Others [7,11] have argued that the main drivers for poor operational performance and cost-recovery among most water service providers (WSPs) in Africa are due to the under-collection of revenue from customers and petty corruption in the water sector. As Rouse [8] posited, effective revenue collection is vital for WSPs to achieve cost recovery, which is critical for utilities’ ability to
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