The effect of information on public acceptance – The case of water from alternative sources

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Abstract

This study aims to provide conclusive evidence that information about water from alternative sources increases public acceptance. We conducted an experiment with 1000 Australian respondents asking them about their acceptance of recycled and desalinated water for a range of purposes under two conditions: 1) no information provided and 2) information about the production process provided. Results indicate that – both for desalinated and recycled water – the stated likelihood of use increases significantly if people are provided with information about the production process. This has major implications for public policy makers indicating that providing factual information (as opposed to persuasive campaigns) will increase public support of water augmentation projects.

Introduction

Technology to augment water on a large scale has been available for a long time (Asano and Tchobanoglous, 1991, Elimelech, 2006). Yet, public knowledge about water, especially water from alternative sources such as recycled and desalinated water, is relatively low among the general population (Dolnicar and Schäfer, 2009). This may be why, historically, proposals for large scale water augmentation have triggered strong negative reactions from the public, and sometimes organised community resistance (such as CADS – Citizens Against Drinking Sewage, and SCUD – Sydney Community United against Desalination in Australia).

History has shown that community resistance can prevent augmentation projects from being developed. Twenty years ago Dishman et al. (1989) concluded that technical aspects of potable water reuse can be resolved, but “the issue of public acceptance could kill the proposal” (p = 158). Indeed in Australia, public opposition to Towoomba Council's potable reuse plans contributed to the community voting against the proposal in a referendum (Hurlimann and Dolnicar, 2010). Public opposition has also delayed projects including Sydney's desalination plant, and in the USA, San Diego's indirect potable reuse plan of the 1990s.

Although some researchers have postulated that knowledge/information about water augmentation schemes increases public acceptance (Hills et al., 2002, Jeffrey and Jefferson, 2003, Hurlimann, 2007) limited empirical proof for the effect of information on acceptance levels has been provided. Our study aims to fill this gap. More specifically we will investigate the hypothesis that providing information about how recycled (H1) and desalinated water (H2) is produced will increase public acceptance of recycled/desalinated water.

Section snippets

Recycled and desalinated water

There is growing demand for water and increasing uncertainty surrounding the supply of natural water resources due to changing and irregular weather patterns. Water authorities around the world are thus forced to adopt non-traditional sources, such as domestic wastewater effluent and seawater (Elimelech, 2006), to secure their water supply. Although considered ‘alternatives’ to natural surface or ground water sources, both wastewater reclamation and seawater desalination have been practiced for

Methodology

We conducted a survey in January 2009 with 1000 respondents over two survey waves using an Australian permission-based research-only internet panel. The chosen panel maintains a database of respondents which enables representative samples to be drawn, based on the Australian Bureau of Statistics' (ABS) census information. A total of 13,884 respondents were randomly selected and invited to participate in the study. 1495 participated in the first wave (response rate of 11%, note however that

Recycled water

The results for recycled water, using the item-level dependent variables, are provided in Table 1. The first column in this table lists all water uses which were included in the questionnaire. The second column lists the average stated likelihood to use recycled water when no additional information (survey one) was provided on a 100 point scale. This is followed by the average stated likelihood to use recycled water when additional information about how recycled water is produced (survey two)

Conclusions

This study is significant in a number of ways. Internationally, it is the first time such a large scale study has been undertaken to assess how information may influence acceptance of alternative water sources. Our study tested whether providing people with visual information about recycled water and desalinated water increased their stated likelihood of using these water sources for 14 purposes. The stimuli used were developed specifically to be realistic in terms of public policy implications

Acknowledgements

This study was funded through an Australian Research Council (ARC) Discovery Grant (DP0878338). We thank Ben Posetti for his contribution to the study as research assistant and Rob Hood from the Faculty of Commerce at the University of Wollongong for graphics support in developing the information stimuli.

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