Sustainable service quality of water and sewerage companies

Although Malaysia is blessed with abundant water resources, sustainability issues on water supply and sewerage services can affect our future if they are not properly managed. Water and sewerage issues such as non revenue water (NRW), water disruption and sewage overflow have impacted the sustainabi...

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Main Author:	Salleh, Abrari
Format:	Thesis
Language:	English
Published:	2018
Subjects:	T Technology (General)
Online Access:	http://eprints.utm.my/id/eprint/96250/1/AbrariSallehPRZK2018.pdf.pdf
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id	my-utm-ep.96250
record_format	uketd_dc
spelling	my-utm-ep.962502022-07-05T07:13:04Z Sustainable service quality of water and sewerage companies 2018 Salleh, Abrari T Technology (General) Although Malaysia is blessed with abundant water resources, sustainability issues on water supply and sewerage services can affect our future if they are not properly managed. Water and sewerage issues such as non revenue water (NRW), water disruption and sewage overflow have impacted the sustainability of companies' businesses and that their quality of service may be questionable. Therefore, it is crucial to identify how far a company is able to meet customer expectations as sustainable service quality (SUSSERV) by water and sewerage companies will give a positive impact on government machinery especially from the Ministry of Energy, Green Technology and Water (KeTTHA) and National Water Services Commission (SPAN). Past studies noted that previous efforts made were focusing either on water quality and water treatment or process quality based (technical issues). Thus, this research attempted to fill in the gap between service, product and process quality. The aim of this study was to measure the quality level of sustainable services for water supply and sewerage companies in Malaysia. SUSSERV model with six independent variables namely tangibles, reliability, responsiveness, assurance, empathy with an additional dimension, sustainability, was developed by modifying the SERVQUAL instrument. This research employed a survey utilizing a quota sampling technique through 500 questionnaires of which 250 questionnaires were distributed to the customers of Syarikat Bekalan Air Selangor (SYABAS) while 250 questionnaires were distributed to Indah Water Konsortium Sdn. Bhd. (IWK) customers in the state of Selangor and Federal Territories comprising Putrajaya and Kuala Lumpur. The results show that SYABAS’ perception on the service quality for all SUSSERV dimensions were much lower than IWK. It was also found that there were no significant differences between the means of perceptions with the exception of eight out of 31 variables and three out of 31 variables in the category of Services (Water and Sewerage) and in Living Status (Type of Houses) respectively. The importance-performance analysis (IPA) indicates that the Assurance and Responsiveness dimensions were at high levels but Sustainability dimension was low for both performance (perceptions) and importance (expectations). The advantage of using the IPA is to assist companies to improve their services. The IPA indicates that both SYABAS and IWK services are rated as very reliable by the customers despite the dissatisfaction of majority of the customers with the services rendered by both companies investigated in the study. The main contribution of this study is the successful utilization of a modified SERVQUAL instrument that can measure sustainable service quality. It is recommended that future research should focus on extending the use of the instrument to other states to further validate and test the instrument. 2018 Thesis http://eprints.utm.my/id/eprint/96250/ http://eprints.utm.my/id/eprint/96250/1/AbrariSallehPRZK2018.pdf.pdf application/pdf en public http://dms.library.utm.my:8080/vital/access/manager/Repository/vital:142861 phd doctoral Universiti Teknologi Malaysia Razak Faculty of Technology & Informatics
institution	Universiti Teknologi Malaysia
collection	UTM Institutional Repository
language	English
topic	T Technology (General)
spellingShingle	T Technology (General) Salleh, Abrari Sustainable service quality of water and sewerage companies
description	Although Malaysia is blessed with abundant water resources, sustainability issues on water supply and sewerage services can affect our future if they are not properly managed. Water and sewerage issues such as non revenue water (NRW), water disruption and sewage overflow have impacted the sustainability of companies' businesses and that their quality of service may be questionable. Therefore, it is crucial to identify how far a company is able to meet customer expectations as sustainable service quality (SUSSERV) by water and sewerage companies will give a positive impact on government machinery especially from the Ministry of Energy, Green Technology and Water (KeTTHA) and National Water Services Commission (SPAN). Past studies noted that previous efforts made were focusing either on water quality and water treatment or process quality based (technical issues). Thus, this research attempted to fill in the gap between service, product and process quality. The aim of this study was to measure the quality level of sustainable services for water supply and sewerage companies in Malaysia. SUSSERV model with six independent variables namely tangibles, reliability, responsiveness, assurance, empathy with an additional dimension, sustainability, was developed by modifying the SERVQUAL instrument. This research employed a survey utilizing a quota sampling technique through 500 questionnaires of which 250 questionnaires were distributed to the customers of Syarikat Bekalan Air Selangor (SYABAS) while 250 questionnaires were distributed to Indah Water Konsortium Sdn. Bhd. (IWK) customers in the state of Selangor and Federal Territories comprising Putrajaya and Kuala Lumpur. The results show that SYABAS’ perception on the service quality for all SUSSERV dimensions were much lower than IWK. It was also found that there were no significant differences between the means of perceptions with the exception of eight out of 31 variables and three out of 31 variables in the category of Services (Water and Sewerage) and in Living Status (Type of Houses) respectively. The importance-performance analysis (IPA) indicates that the Assurance and Responsiveness dimensions were at high levels but Sustainability dimension was low for both performance (perceptions) and importance (expectations). The advantage of using the IPA is to assist companies to improve their services. The IPA indicates that both SYABAS and IWK services are rated as very reliable by the customers despite the dissatisfaction of majority of the customers with the services rendered by both companies investigated in the study. The main contribution of this study is the successful utilization of a modified SERVQUAL instrument that can measure sustainable service quality. It is recommended that future research should focus on extending the use of the instrument to other states to further validate and test the instrument.
format	Thesis
qualification_name	Doctor of Philosophy (PhD.)
qualification_level	Doctorate
author	Salleh, Abrari
author_facet	Salleh, Abrari
author_sort	Salleh, Abrari
title	Sustainable service quality of water and sewerage companies
title_short	Sustainable service quality of water and sewerage companies
title_full	Sustainable service quality of water and sewerage companies
title_fullStr	Sustainable service quality of water and sewerage companies
title_full_unstemmed	Sustainable service quality of water and sewerage companies
title_sort	sustainable service quality of water and sewerage companies
granting_institution	Universiti Teknologi Malaysia
granting_department	Razak Faculty of Technology & Informatics
publishDate	2018
url	http://eprints.utm.my/id/eprint/96250/1/AbrariSallehPRZK2018.pdf.pdf
_version_	1747818651450343424

Sustainable service quality of water and sewerage companies

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