Exploring determinants of public satisfaction with urban solid waste collection services quality

Abstract

This work explores determinants of public satisfaction with urban solid waste collection service quality of the city of Burgos (Spain). A Structural Equation Modeling is conducted based on the indicators of the service quality offered by the SEMAT S.A. company and the dimensions offered by SERVQUAL service quality model. The findings show that Assurance and Responsiveness have a positive and significant effect on public satisfaction. However, Reliability, Empathy, and Tangible have no significant effect. Regarding Assurance, cleanliness of pavements and cleanliness of walkways are the indicators that provide a significant influence on this dimension. Otherwise, daily collection of organic waste and daily collection of selective waste are the indicators that provide a significant effect on the Responsiveness dimension. We can emphasize that increasing public satisfaction can be achieved by increasing the frequency of pavements and walkways cleanliness and the frequency of organic and selective waste collection and that this has a clear relationship with the increase in costs and pollution impact. Find a balance between frequency of collection and cost and pollution is necessary. Despite this, the significance of these indicators is strong enough to motivate decision-makers to address their efforts and investments in improving them, enabling thus an effective and efficient service at the required level of quality and adjusting their strategies to increase public satisfaction. Moreover, the study highlights that 84.37% of citizens are satisfied with the service. In addition to this practical validation at the management level, we also discuss environmental and sustainability repercussions.