IRC Mini Symposium

The Human Factor in WASH Change Processes

Factors for success in learning and change

Humanity House – June 18 2015

Luuk van Kempen

Community “culture” (I)

A ‘romantic’ view on community life:

1. Social capital is present, only needs mobilization willingness to cooperate with other community members taken for granted

2. People are well-informed about behaviour of ‘neighbours’ level of adherence to social norms is known

3. Social approval is granted to people who try to get ahead in life and put newly gained wealth on display no risk to program participation

Rural electrification program on Zanzibar yielded lower benefits than expected because of the “restrictions people face in buying electrical

consumables for fear of the evil eye” (quoted in White, 2011)

Community “culture” (II)

Success story from Bangladesh (Guiteras, Levinsohn & Mobarak, Science, 2015):

Subsidies to buy toilet by random allocation (lottery)

# of toilet owners > # of lottery winners, especially in villages with many lottery winners strong “social multiplier” effect

Community “culture” (III)

Success story from Costa Rica (Datta et al., World Bank, 2015):

Significant decrease in water use by using stickers that compare household consumption with that of social referents

Only works if own neighbourhood is taken as reference group!

NGO “culture”

Weak incentives to invest in getting “under the skin” of communities downward accountability becomes diluted

Donor reporting requirements emphasize “scale” pressure to expand activities to new target areas (or groups) + tendency to work through smaller CBOs as “extension agents” in the field

Compare “dogfooding” and “immersion programs” in private sector

Local government “culture”

Downward accountability is selective (strong to ‘clients’; weak to all others)

Mansuri & Rao (2013): To provide stronger incentives to local bureaucrats, bottom-up pressure from civil society is necessary but insufficient condition; pressure from the ‘top’ is equally important

‘sandwich’ model