The decision to install home sanitation for the first time
can be a big one and often involves changing household-related
infrastructure as well as defecation and faeces handling practices.
In making this decision, households need to progress through
three stages of adoption:
1. Motivation or preference for the change which is built
on dissatisfaction with ones current practice combined with
awareness of better options
2. Intention which reflects the process of beginning to make
a plan to build
3. Choice stage of implementing the plan (Jenkins and Scott
2005).
At any point in the decision making
process, the householder can meet a constraint which prevents
them from progressing to the next stage. Many of these constraints
seem to represent insurmountable and frustrating blockages
to the householder and latrine ownership remains a distant
dream. Other constraints are temporary and will eventually
be removed when circumstances, usually financial, improve.
The nature of the vulnerable lives of the poor living in Developing
Countries, mean that temporary constraints can last for many
years even though the householder may have a strong desire
and drive to building a latrine.
An examination of the barriers that block adoption in different
settings reveals a number of common constraints to expressed
demand for sanitation related to
• Awareness and understanding
• Technical complexity and lack of technical information
• Perceived and real high costs, and difficulty saving
up money
• Lack of financing options
• Competing priorities for time and money
• Few technically appropriate, attractive or feasible
choices available to meet peoples’ desires, housing
situations, and geophysical settings.
- Lack
of awareness and misunderstandings about latrines’
function, safety issues, and cost
- Technical complexity of construction, materials, expertise/advice,
skilled labour, special tools, etc and difficulty accessing
them.
- Perceived poor design and performance of existing latrines
(durability, child safety, accidents, pit collapse and
bad smells)
- Difficulty saving enough money
- Unsuitable soil conditions
- Limited space
- Extended family interaction problems, social norms and
disapproval
- Perceived benefits of open defecation for soil fertilization
and privacy
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- High
costs
- No one to build
- Water table/soil conditions
- Technical complexity
- Savings, lack of credit availability
- Competing priorities
- Tenancy issues
- Limited space
- Permit problems
- Satisfied with toilet
- Lack decision-making capacity
- Poor options
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- Lack
of reliable product information and technical services
- Lack of desirable products
- Lack of credible suppliers
- Misperception of costs as higher than they were
- Other competing priorities (e.g., TV, Karaoke set, furniture)
- High transaction costs to access information and suppliers
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- Inability
to raise sufficient funds to construct facilities, competing
needs for savings and cash
- Lack of awareness of the value of sanitation and hygiene,
access to information limited to those with higher literacy
and education
- Lack of knowledge on how to construct and maintain pit
latrines
- Adverse geo-hydrological conditions causing problems
such as collapsing latrines, shallow pits due to high
water table or hard rock, flooding that fills up and overflows
pits and causes repeated collapse
- Nomadic pastoralism where permanent facilities are of
no use
- Cultural factors that dictate restrictions that are
not observed in the way facilities are designed
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In the Benin study and elsewhere, usually
women-headed households experienced more of these constraints
and at higher levels than male-headed households, especially
with regard to accessing good technical information about
latrines, their costs and their construction. The study revealed
an important distinction between high cost and difficulty
saving money. While 85% of non-adopter households and 47%
of adopter households cited difficulty saving sufficient money
to build a latrine as a constraint, only 11% of non-adopter
households said that the cost of a latrine was too high (Jenkins
1999, 2004). Households with little exposure to latrine information
or to a range of alternatives, who may cite high cost as a
barrier, often have an inflated perception of costs from lack
of good information.
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