Abstract
Water management is becoming increasingly salient as climate change continues to alter the environment, resulting in more severe and frequent droughts. To address water management issues, large-scale projects may be needed. However, public support is often a prerequisite for governments at all levels to enact such projects. Given the growing importance of these issues, there are few recent studies that explore public attitudes, preferences, and risk assessments about water-related resource allocations. Will the public act to constrain the actions of their elected officials? Is the public ready to begin considering policies, regulations, and expenditures that address the potential impacts of increased drought frequency on local, state and national water resources? This research reports the results of two national public opinion surveys in the United States that focused on water management and drought issues. The results indicate that the public is willing to support government efforts to manage water, but not if they negatively affect the environment or agriculture.
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Notes
Since 2000, studies of public attitudes toward water-related issues have focused primarily on a single issue – most frequently water reuse (e.g. Dolnicar and Schäfer 2009; Marks et al. 2006; Menegaki et al. 2007) – or a relatively narrow community (e.g. Hurd et al. 2006; Willis et al. 2011). Other studies focus on water quality (e.g. Clay et al. 2007), and not on water management or drought. Finally, many of these studies rely upon a relatively small number of respondents (e.g. Menegaki et al. 2007; Willis et al. 2011).
The survey was fielded twice due to a coding issue with one of the battery stems in the initial sampling, which was corrected prior to the second sampling. The minor coding issue on the first sampling does not affect the integrity of the dual survey results reported here as that particular battery stem is not part of this data analysis nor related to any items in this analysis.
An examination of the demographic characteristics of the two samples indicates that both samples are likely representative of the general population, as they reflect levels that are consistent with Census data. For instance, reflective of recent partisan shifts found in other national public opinion polls (e.g. Gallup), the results show that a larger proportion of the respondents identify as Democrat than Republican. Additionally, as is common in survey research, these samples do have a higher proportion of white respondents. However, it is unclear within the literature the extent to which racial differences influence attitudes toward drought and water management.
Both variables were rescaled to make their scales from 0 to 40. The long-term city strategy was originally coded from 0 to 10, so we multiplied each observation by 4. The un-named policy was originally coded 0 to 4, so each observation was multiplied by 10. Using a T-Test, the means of the two measures were compared and the difference between the two was statistically significant (p < 0.0000). This indicates that the support for the city strategy is significantly higher than support for the un-named policy.
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Stoutenborough, J.W., Vedlitz, A. Public Attitudes Toward Water Management and Drought in the United States. Water Resour Manage 28, 697–714 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11269-013-0509-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11269-013-0509-7