Understanding the determinants of household water treatment (HWT) behavior in developing countries is important to increase the rate of its regular use so that households can have safe water at home. This is especially so when the quality of the water source is not reliable. We present a hierarchical Bayesian Belief Network (BBN) model supported by statistical analysis to explore the influence of household’s socio-economic characteristics (SECs) on the HWT behavior via household’s psychological factors. The model uses eight SECs, such as mother’s and father’s education, wealth, and religion, and five RANAS psychological factors, i.e., risk, attitude, norms, ability, and self-regulation to analyse HWT behavior in a suburban area in Palu, Indonesia. Structured household interviews were conducted among 202 households. We found that mother’s education is the most important SEC that influences the regular use of HWT. An educated mother has more positive attitude towards HWT and is more confident in her ability to perform HWT. Moreover, self-regulation, especially the attempt to deal with any barrier that hinders HWT practice, is the most important psychological factor that can change irregular HWT users to regular HWT users. Hence, this paper recommends to HWT-program implementers to identify potential barriers and discuss potential solutions with the target group in order to increase the probability of the target group being a regular HWT user.
Household water treatment (HWT) is a solution for households that do not have access to a safe drinking water supply. A cross-sectional study was conducted in Ende District, Province of Nusa Tenggara Timur (NTT), Indonesia. A total of 425 household respondents were interviewed and observed about the HWT practice and water storage condition and 143 household drinking water samples were collected for microbial water quality analysis. Results show that even though HWT is regularly performed, not all the water they drink has been treated. The ‘level’ of psychological factors risk, attitude, norms, ability, and self-regulation (RANAS) were high, indicating that regular HWT practice goes in hand with the underlying psychological factors. Psychological factor action planning was the most influential psychological sub-factor associated related with the frequency of drinking treated water. Drinking water is mostly stored in safe storage, but placed in a less hygienic surrounding environment. Though HWT results in better water quality, water quality was not significantly associated with HWT, drinking water handling, or storage. Finally, promoting always drinking treated water and then storing it in a safe and hygienic environment are still needed in areas where HWT is commonly practiced, so people can get the maximum health impact of HWT.
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