The effect of physical accessibility and service level of water supply on economic accessibility: a case study of Bandung City, Indonesia

ABSTRACT

Achieving equitable access to water, in the sense of both physical and economic accessibility, remains a challenge. The article evaluates these two types of accessibility across households of different income groups in Central Cikapundung Basin, Indonesia. Higher-income households are more likely to use piped water, bottled water, or combinations thereof and have higher water expenditures than their lower-income counterparts. We estimate the hidden mitigation costs of groundwater extraction and water boiling and highlight the importance of incorporating mitigation costs when assessing the impacts of poor service quality of water supply on household water expenditure and affordability.

KEYWORDS:

• Affordability
• equitable access
• mitigation
• physical and economic accessibility
• SDGs
• Indonesia

Acknowledgment

The authors wish to thank Ahmad Komarulzaman for his valuable insights and Miranti Mayangsari for her technical assistance. The research was partly funded by the Water and Health research programme at Deltares (Netherlands), the International Office of Radboud University Nijmegen (Netherlands), and Research, Community Services, and Innovation Program of Institut Teknologi Bandung (Indonesia). This research is also part of the Alliance for Water, Health, and Development, a joint research and education program between Institut Teknologi Bandung, Universitas Padjajaran, Radboud University, and Deltares. We specifically thank Anni Rochaeni for her expertise. The household survey employed in this study is part of the real demand assessment activities in the Water Safety Plan pilot program instigated by the WASPOLA Facility Indonesia and Bandung City’s Working Group of Water and Sanitation. A joint team from WASPOLA, Institut Teknologi Bandung and Universitas Pasundan carefully prepared and implemented the survey. Although the survey is part of another research project and the data are not freely available, permission for the use of the data in this article was granted by the original Water Safety Plan pilot program team.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Geographical information

Central Cikapundung River Basin, Bandung City, West Java, Indonesia. Latitude −6.8727 (decimal degrees); longitude 107.6113 (decimal degrees), elevation 880, slope 1, precipitation 2292, topsoil texture: loam, aridity: humid (as shown in journalmap.org).

Notes

1. In 2011, the NSO altered the way they monitor access to water by changing the definition of improved water source. Access to water in Indonesian households is now classified as ‘improved’ if their main water source for bathing and washing, rather than for drinking, originates from an improved source.

2. Piped water users may also use storage systems to cope with a non-continuous supply of piped water. However, based on the field observations, these piped water users rarely use expensive overhead storage like we encountered among borehole users. Piped water users use polyethylene drums to store water, which costs much less than an overhead storage system, which requires a pump to push water up to the overhead tank.

3. Control over the quality of bottled water from registered companies is relatively straightforward, but the regulations on refill water require special attention as they are more informal, and many are unregistered in cities’ health offices.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Water and Health research programme Deltares, Radboud University, and Institut Teknologi Bandung (Research, Community Service, and Innovation Program).