Technological Spaces in the Semi-Arid High Plains: Examining Well Ownership and Investment in Water-Saving Appliances

Brock Ternes

doi:10.3390/w13030365

Abstract

Groundwater depletion has been a consequential problem in Kansas, a drought-prone state widely reliant on the High Plains aquifer. This manuscript explores well ownership’s moderating effects on the relationships between awareness of water supplies and the use of water-saving devices. It assesses one of the only quantitative datasets of private water well owners used in social scientific research (n = 864) and discusses the intricate results of multi-group structural equation models with respondents organized by their water supplies. Well ownership and water literacy are significantly correlated to owning water-conservation technologies, and well ownership combined with access to municipal water weakens the correlations between awareness and owning water-saving appliances.

Highlights

Around the planet, groundwater supplies are facing precipitous declines, and one third of Earth’s largest aquifers are extremely stressed [1]
When measuring the outcomes of investing in water-saving appliances, familiarity with water supplies was found to be positively correlated with the outcome constructs. This implies that increasing Kansans’ levels of awareness would theoretically increase the ownership of water saving devices, and increasing public awareness of water usage is a precondition for better water management. These results suggest that water supply infrastructure is an important component of citizens’ resource awareness and investments in efficient technologies, which is similar to the echoes of previous research providing evidence that environmental considerations are influential precursors of pro-environmental behavior (PEB) [53]
This study examined how private water wells influence conservation by comparing the watering technologies of well owners to those of non-well owners across the state

Summary

Introduction

Groundwater supplies are facing precipitous declines, and one third of Earth’s largest aquifers are extremely stressed [1]. As anthropogenic warming intensifies droughts, groundwater losses present a challenging hydroclimatic hazard, and the diminishment of aquifers (underground reservoirs of freshwater) will continue to create global water shortages [2,3]. These vital supplies of freshwater underlie many of the planet’s arid and semi-arid regions, and they remain humanity’s greatest defense against droughts, though researchers anticipate further dependency on aquifers into the future [4]. Extreme heat waves, and colossal extractions from tens of thousands of irrigation wells have occasioned terrible declines for one of the largest aquifer systems in the world, the High Plains aquifer.

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