Abstract

Private water supply systems consisting of a domestic well and septic system are used throughout the world where households lack access to public water supply and sewers. In residential areas with high housing density, septic contamination of private wells is common and associated with multiple health concerns. This situation can give rise to social dilemmas, where individual costs dis-incentivize homeowners from investing in enhanced septic systems that would reduce well contamination and bring communal benefits. We combine a stylized game-theoretical model with a probabilistic groundwater model to characterize how economic and hydrogeological conditions interact to produce misaligned incentives conducive to social dilemmas. The occurrence of social dilemmas depends on the relative costs of well contamination versus the cost of installing an enhanced septic treatment system, and the relative probabilities of cross-contamination versus self-contamination. The game reveals three three types of social dilemmas that occur in such systems, with each calling for distinct policy solutions. We demonstrate how the model can be applied to existing systems using a case study of St Joseph County, Indiana, where high nitrate contamination rates have raised public health concerns. This analysis represents a step towards identifying alternative policy solutions for a problem that has remained difficult to address for decades.

Highlights

  • Groundwater plays a critical role in supporting social and ecological systems throughout the world (Gleeson and Richter, 15 2018)

  • The type of social dilemma can serve as a guideline to understanding barriers to cooperation and policy opportunities to shift from the Nash equilibrium to the Social Optimum (Fig. 8)

  • We develop a theoretical framework to understand how misaligned incentives can give rise to social dilemmas within such private water systems

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Summary

Introduction

Groundwater plays a critical role in supporting social and ecological systems throughout the world (Gleeson and Richter, 15 2018). Fundamental to the challenge of groundwater protection is the issue of environmental externalities, where the polluter gains some benefit from inadequate (or faulty) treatment prior to water being discharged or leaked to the subsurface (Hellegers et al, 2001) This problem arises in a variety of industrial and agricultural settings, groundwater systems that supply residential communities can be compromised by inadequate private water systems (Withers et al, 2014). We re-frame the problem from the perspective of 60 household utility, with the goal of identifying when households may benefit from policy instruments to support solutions that maximize collective welfare To address this challenges, we develop a game theoretic model to understand how social dilemmas might arise in private water systems. We review the different types of social dilemmas that may occur in such private water systems, along with a discussion of barriers and policy opportunities to support effective management strategies (Sect. 5)

Expected utility and payout matrices
Symmetric two-player games
A general N-player game and groundwater model
Groundwater model
Study site
Model parameterization and calibration
Social dilemmas
Discussion
Findings
Conclusions
385 References
Full Text
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