Abstract:
Mounting recognition of the socio-political context of the management of water
resources has rendered the application of technocratic approaches in isolation
insufficient in addressing future management challenges with participatory
approaches increasingly promoted in response. Against this background, new
regulatory mechanisms in the water sector in England and Wales promise an
increased role for the views of customers in water utility planning and decision-
making. Yet, existing scholarship on the institutionalisation of participative
approaches in water utility planning and decision-making in England and Wales
is sparse.
This thesis contributes to an improved understanding of factors that hold
potential to impact institutionalisation of participative approaches in this context
by focusing on three specific aspects of effectiveness; motivational clarity, the
influence of participative mechanism design, and the use and influence of water
utility customer contributions in water sector planning and decision-making. This
has been achieved through the deployment of participatory research in
collaboration with the sponsoring organisation (a water utility operating in
England and Wales) utilising group discussion and semi-structured interviews
with domestic water customers and water utility practitioner respectively.
Findings demonstrate that preference elicitation vehicles embedded within
participatory mechanisms hold the potential to influence participants expressed
preferences thus representing a key design consideration where multi-
mechanism approaches are deployed in planning and decision-making
contexts. Furthermore, useful design considerations for multi-attribute
presentation in participatory mechanisms are presented. Findings also identify a
dominance of instrumental and legalistic practitioner motivations for the use of
participative approaches in water utility decision-making. Foremost, it identified
the significance of the regulator in driving water utility practices for the
management and influence of customer contributions in planning and decision-
making, and more fundamentally illustrates the significant barrier posed by a legacy of technocratic practices for the institutionalisation of participatory
approaches in water utilities.