Essential services such as maternal healthcare operate within structured systems characterized by institutional dependency, limited exit options, and asymmetric authority configurations. While Service-Dominant Logic conceptualizes service ecosystems as networks of resource-integrating actors coordinated through institutional arrangements (Vargo and Lusch 2016), it largely assumes symmetrical participation capacity. In essential service contexts, however, participation is conditioned by multi-level structural constraints that influence system performance and wellbeing outcomes. This study develops an empirically grounded conceptual systems framework to diagnose constrained consumption in essential service ecosystems. Drawing on Service-Dominant Logic, vulnerability theory, Transformative Service Research, and service system design, the research integrates macro-level institutional design, meso-level relational configuration, and micro-level participation activation into a unified Macro–Meso–Micro architecture. The proposed model conceptualizes consumption realization as a system performance outcome governed by cross-level interaction. It identifies key system mechanisms including downward constraint propagation, participation activation thresholds, feedback stabilization, and non-linear interaction effects, explaining how structural misalignment produces constrained consumption despite formal service availability. The framework reframes constrained consumption as an emergent property of system-level misalignment rather than individual disengagement and functions as a diagnostic tool for evaluating authority structures, relational mediation, and participation capability in essential service systems. The study contributes a structured systems architecture for analyzing how institutional asymmetry, relational mediation, and participation capability jointly determine consumption realization and wellbeing performance in high-dependency service environments.

Keywords

Essential service ecosystems, Constrained consumption, Systems design framework, Participation capability, Structural asymmetry