Achieving the ‘good life’: Why some people want latrines in rural Benin

Abstract

Nearly half the world's population lacks basic sanitation to protect their environment from human fecal contamination. Building a latrine is the first step on the sanitation ladder in developing countries where a majority of the population defecates in open or public areas. Public health programs to improve sanitation have consistently framed promotional messages in terms of fecal–oral disease prevention and largely fail to motivate changes in sanitation behavior. A qualitative consumer study using in-depth interviews with 40 household heads was carried out to explore the decision to install a pit latrine in rural Benin. The motives for installing a latrine are reported and variations across the interviews are examined. The paper asserts that at least one active drive (desire for change or dissatisfaction) from among 11 found is needed to motivate latrine adoption. Drives involved prestige, well-being, and situational goals. Health considerations played only a minor role, and had little if anything to do with preventing fecal–oral disease transmission. Drives varied with gender, occupation, life stage, travel experience, education, and wealth, and reflected perceptions of the physical and social geography of the village, linked to availability of open defecation sites, social structure, road access, and urban proximity. The results have broad implications for new messages and strategies to promote sanitation in developing countries.

Introduction

After 25 years of publicly subsidized latrine construction and public health education programs in developing countries, 2.6 billion people still have no suitable means of excreta disposal. This leads to fecal contamination of the environment, gastro-enteric infections and loss of dignity and quality of life. A target to halve the proportion of the world's population without adequate sanitation by 2015 was included in the Millennium Development Goals (United Nations, 2002). International agencies and sanitation experts have called for new demand-responsive approaches to address the sanitation gap (Cairncross (1992), Cairncross (2003); Lafond, 1995; WHO/UNICEF, 2000). If such approaches are to achieve the required growth in coverage rates, it becomes imperative that we understand what generates demand and how to motivate more households to adopt improved sanitation. Such insights into consumer behavior and demand have thus far been lacking in the sanitation and public health literature.

Consumer motivation for acquiring sanitation can be explored from several theoretical viewpoints including means-end chains (Reynolds & Gutman, 1988), belief–attitude relations (Fishbein & Ajzen, 1975), the theory of planned behavior (Ajzen, 1985), models of goal-oriented consumer decision-making (Bagozzi & Lee, 1999; Bettman, Johnson, & Payne, 1991; Engel, Blackwell, & Kollat, 1978), and the adoption and diffusion of innovations (Gatignon & Robertson, 1985; Rogers, 1983). The latter is particularly insightful for understanding the spread of new demand for latrines, which are innovations that replace existing defecation and excreta disposal practices for most target households and entail significant opportunity cost with respect to other purchases.

In this study, motives or reasons for latrine adoption are conceptualized as consumer drives: desires for change arising out of dissatisfaction from a perceived difference between a desired or ideal state and one's actual state or situation (Bagozzi & Lee, 1999; Engel et al., 1978). Perceived ideal states associated with acquiring a latrine reflect personal goals and values (individual lifestyle) while actual states are determined by the physical and social environment related to current defecation practices of relevance to these goals and values (Fig. 1). The dissonance between the two states combined with sufficient positive awareness of latrines leads to aroused motivation for a latrine. Active drives are an essential but not sufficient condition for creating demand for sanitation, as opportunity and ability to acquire sanitation, including the resources and transactions needed to translate desire for a latrine into a functioning installation, must also be present.

This paper presents a study of consumer motivation for installing a household latrine in the Republic of Benin, West Africa, using Fig. 1 as a framework to answer the question: who wants sanitation and why? Exploratory in-depth interviews with 40 heads of household were carried out as the first task of a larger study of sanitation demand (Jenkins, 1999). Information was gathered about the motives and barriers of latrine adoption, and beliefs, attitudes, and experiences related to latrines. The results shed light on the behavior and motives of sanitation consumers in developing countries and point to demand-responsive strategies related to message framing, population targeting, and other marketing approaches to accelerate the adoption of improved sanitation.