Abstract
Despite the often emphasized importance of water awareness, and notwithstanding the fact that calls for increasing public awareness are becoming commonplace, most studies do not define the concept, let alone operationalise it into measurable units. This is, however, essential to measure and evaluate efforts related to water awareness such as public campaigns, customer communication and behavioural interventions. To address this gap, we conceptualise, operationalise and assess tap water awareness, hereby differentiating between cognitive awareness (head), affectional awareness (heart), and behavioural awareness (hands). In parallel, we also differentiate between tap water quality, quantity and system. By building on a variety of contemporary conceptual insights in literature and a series of expert interviews, an assessment framework is developed. A cohesive set of nine awareness components are identified and operationalised into a set of tangible questions which are put to the test in a large-scale online survey (n = 1003) in the Netherlands, applying both a traditional and modern segmentation approach based on four types of perspectives (‘quality & health concerned’, ‘aware & committed’, ‘egalitarian & solidary’, and ‘down to earth & confident’). Based on the analysis of the results of the first empirical application of our tap water awareness assessment framework, we conclude that—with a score 53.5 points out of 100—tap water awareness in the Netherlands shows ample room for improvement. Interestingly, most significant variations in awareness are generally not related to sociodemographic factors but rather apply to the four customer perspectives on drinking water that are based on people’s subjective views and preferences.
Highlights
Global access to drinking water and the combined importance of the management of freshwater resources and access to drinking water and sanitation, identified as a Sustainable Development Goal (SDG6), have improved over the last decades [1, 2]
Public awareness about freshwater availability, environmental impact, the need for more sophisticated and more costly treatment processes, and the necessity to use water more efficiently, becomes more important than ever before. This urgency is for instance reflected in the influential work on water governance of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), warning for a lack of public awareness in, for instance the Netherlands, with respect to too little, too much and too polluted water [11, 12]
The same head, heart & hands approach has been applied in other fields, including research on engagement [34], and is consistent with the three dimensions of attitudes identified in social psychological research [35]. In parallel to this threefold conceptualisation of TWA, we propose an additional more practical classification that is based on substantive characteristics of drinking water: water quality, water quantity and water system
Summary
Global access to drinking water and the combined importance of the management of freshwater resources and access to drinking water and sanitation, identified as a Sustainable Development Goal (SDG6), have improved over the last decades [1, 2]. The emission of pesticides, biocides and nutrients from agriculture, the release of hazardous chemicals from households (e.g. pharmaceuticals and detergents) and from industrial processes, as well as the increasing number of emerging substances form a growing threat affecting water resources [9, 10]. Against this backdrop, public awareness about freshwater availability, environmental impact, the need for more sophisticated and more costly treatment processes, and the necessity to use water more efficiently, becomes more important than ever before. This urgency is for instance reflected in the influential work on water governance of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), warning for a lack of public awareness in, for instance the Netherlands, with respect to too little, too much and too polluted water [11, 12]
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