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INTRODUCTION
Discouraging the practice of open defecation and increasing the use of toilets in rural settlements are important goals for governments in developing countries, including India. Accordingly, policies are formulated towards influencing changes in attitudes and behaviors of people through increasing awareness and education and through the provision of subsidies for construction of household toilets with basic service quality (Snehalatha & Anitha 2012). Despite substantive efforts, demand for and use of toilets in India, particularly in rural areas, is not encouraging (Routray et al. 2015; Banerjee et al. 2016). While a considerable proportion of households are without toilets and defecate in the open, several existing toilet users are reverting to the practice of open defecation (Reddy et al. 2010). While toilet usage is directly influenced by the users' perception of the benefits and constraints of toilet use (O'Connell 2014; Hirve et al. 2015; Banerjee et al. 2016; Garn et al. 2017), studies have found that perceived service quality of toilets is one of the major factors influencing toilet adoption in India because it influences user beliefs about the benefits of toilet use (Jenkins et al. 2014; Okurut et al. 2015; Routray et al. 2015; Steinmann et al. 2015). Service quality represents an important concept in understanding the ways in which users appraise service provision (Morton et al. 2016) and project performance (Agarwal 2008; Tumwebaze et al. 2013; Jenkins et al. 2014). It is also important to identify the service quality attributes of household toilets that influence users' satisfaction with overall service quality based on their perspective, as users are the ‘sole judges of service quality’ (Berry et al. 1990).
User perception acts as a strong mediator and predictor of behavioral intention (Das & Pandit 2013; Morton et al. 2016) and could be used in developing policies that improve user satisfaction and result in improved sustainability and sustained use of delivered services (Agarwal 2008; Das & Pandit 2015; Morton et al. 2016), thus attracting new users and retaining the existing users of toilets. User perception also varies from person to person over space and time (Parasuraman et al. 1988; Bolaane & Ikgopoleng 2011; Mahmoud et al. 2011; Anthonj et al. 2016).
The present study aims to identify the relative importance of different service quality attributes of...