@misc{10481/29174,
year = {2007},
month = {11},
url = {http://hdl.handle.net/10481/29174},
abstract = {Quality is a dimension of water services that has been repeatedly omitted in
the study of performance of water utilities. In this paper, we make use of Data Envelopment
Analysis techniques (DEA) to compute both conventional quantity-based and
quality-adjusted indicators of technical efficiency for a sample of Spanish water utilities.
The key assumptions are that a lack of quality (bad quality) can be regarded as a bad
output, and the existence of a trade-off between quantity and quality. Our main results
indicate that quality matters in measuring technical performance, the difference between
conventional and quality-adjusted evaluations representing the opportunity cost of maintaining
quality. Averages and distribution functions significantly differ between both
assessments of performance, although water utilities do not seem to rank differently.},
publisher = {Universidad de Granada. Facultad de Ciencias Económicas y Empresariales},
keywords = {Water utilities},
keywords = {Quality},
keywords = {Data envelopment analysis},
title = {Does service quality matter in measuring performance of water utilities?},
author = {Picazo-Tadeo, Andrés J. and Sáez-Fernández, Francisco J. and González Gómez, Francisco José},
}