FACTOR ANALYSIS ON THE CITIZENS’ ACCEPTANCE OF WATER TARIFF INCREASE

Abstract

 A questionnaire survey on waterworks and water tariff was performed in four cities in Japan. As a result of a factor analysis and a covariance structure analysis, a psychological model with the end point of the citizens’ acceptance of water tariff increase was constructed. It was found that the citizens’ evaluation of the current water tariff has the strongest impact on the acceptance of water tariff increase. Consequently, the most important communication point for the acceptance is to improve the evaluation of water tariff by noticing that current water tariff is reasonable. In addition, the acceptance could be improved by the efforts that improve the evaluation of the communication conducted by water utility, the reliability on waterworks and the satisfaction on drinking water quality. On the other hand, the contribution of the knowledge on the conditions of waterworks for improving the acceptance is limited. Therefore, it should not be expected that the acceptance could be directly improved by improving the knowledge on the conditions of waterworks.