Community interactions and sanitation use by the urban poor: Survey evidence from India’s slums

Abstract

While the current scholarship on open defecation overwhelmingly focuses on increasing access to sanitation facilities as the solution, millions of people around the world still practise open defecation despite having latrines. This is especially problematic in urban slums where people are more vulnerable to sanitation-related diseases compared with rural areas because of their high population density. We explore why latrines are not being used even when they are available to slum dwellers by identifying social interactions that serve as information channels that promote public latrine use. Using an original survey in New Delhi, we find that slum dwellers who frequently interact with slum leaders, more so than other community leaders, are more likely to use nearby public latrines regularly. A survey of slum leaders finds that their role in fixing and maintaining public latrines and informing others of these acts as well as educating people on hygiene encourage public latrine use.