Access of potable drinking water is still a leading global challenge. Household water treatment (HWT) is one possible means to tackle this issue of non-potable drinking water at household level. Unfortunately, studies have shown that people do not use it regularly which otherwise can make positive impact on people health. Researchers use several psychology concepts or models to explain this phenomenon. These models often mention some psycho-social factors that determine or are responsible for the behavior, for example perception of risk or the perception of benefit using the product. Some of these psychology model also mentioned that socio-environmental characteristics (contextual factors) influence the psycho-social factors and thereby influence the behaviour. Even though the interactions between contextual and psycho-social factors is essential to understand the behaviour of households in WASH research, such interactions are often ignored and remain to be analysed on its own merit. The motivation of this research is to analyse such interactions and then use the result to model the adoption of water treatment by households. We present a novel approach to assess the regular usage of household water treatment (HWT) using data from a cross-sectional study in October 2014. 451 households in 5 villages in mid-western rural Nepal were randomly selected to participate in the study. A Bayesian belief networks (BBN) model that integrates socio-environmental characteristics, such as education and type of water source, and the RANAS psycho-social factors (Risk-Attitude-Norm-Ability-Self regulation) was developed. Preliminary results show that 1) a single socio-environmental characteristic can be associated with multiple psycho-social factors that positively influence households to adopt HWT, 2) Education and location of the households and HWT promotion are the most influential socio-environmental characteristics, 3) Behavioral change intervention should address at least three psycho-social factors to boost the likelihood of using HWT. Our approach can help the implementer to understand the system and develop better intervention to increase the chances of HWT uptake and improve livelihoods of people in developing countries. @en

One of the sub-goals of United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 6 is to achieve universal and equitable access to safe and affordable drinking water for all by 2030. Household water treatment (HWT; such as boiling, chlorination, solar or UV disinfection with lamps, etc.) is one of the technologies that can be used to reach this target. However, there is a big challenge to scale up the widespread implementation of this technology. Even though there are many HWT products on the market, sustainable uptake of this method (compliance) is unsatisfying. Researchers have shown that its compliance rate has often declined over time. Since there are many factors that influence the compliance rate, it is desirable to know the best combination of causal factors (pathway) that give the highest compliance based on the success stories reported in the literature. The motivation of this research is to find the pathways characteristic of local people that influence the compliance rate of HWT, using QCA (Qualitative Comparative Analysis). The comparative analysis is essentially a meta-analysis of HWT interventions and factors, possibly, behind successful or unsuccessful HWT uptake reported in literature. This thus helps to identify the characteristics of target communities that are willing to adopt HWT intervention, irrespective of the type of HWT. Out of 102 case studies reported in literature, 36 are selected from developing countries where an HWT intervention lasted for at least 12 months were selected and analyzed. Factors such as education level, perception about water quality, local beliefs, sanitation coverage, existing water treatment, type of water source, ability to pay, willingness to pay, existing local supply chain, and accessibility to water treatment were examined. Preliminary results show that 1) a combination of no prior HWT intervention in the community with a general perception of water quality being poor often leads to uptake of HWT technology, 2) education level can compensate beliefs that stand against HWT uptake, and 3) drawing water from improved source can hinder the adoption of HWT. Such critical messages help us understand the status quo and enable us to implement changes that could increase the chances of HWT uptake and improve livelihoods of people in developing countries.@en