Salt or Sludge? Exploring Preferences for Potable Water Sources

• Published in: Environmental & resource economics Vol. 57; no. 3; pp. 453 - 476
• Main Authors: Gibson, Fiona L., Burton, Michael
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Dordrecht Springer Netherlands 01.03.2014; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Attitudes; Communities; Consumption; Contextual analysis; Costs; Decision making; Drinking water; Econometrics; Economic incentives; Economic Policy; Economics; Economics and Finance; Environmental Economics; Environmental Law/Policy/Ecojustice; Environmental Management; Estimation; Expected utility; Incentives; Polls & surveys; Potable water; Preferences; Psychology; Public policy; Recycled; Recycling; Sludge; Statistical analysis; Theory of planned behavior; Valuation; Waste water; Water treatment; Australia; Perth Western Australia Australia; Attitudes; Non-market valuation; Recycled wastewater
• ISSN: 0924-6460; 1573-1502
• DOI: 10.1007/s10640-013-9672-9

Decision makers often use information about public preferences to guide public policy. Several disciplines gather information on preferences through surveys by asking respondents to make hypothetical choices over potential policies. However the context of the choice question differs between approaches, with some failing to make the full consequences of the respondent’s choice explicit in the question. In this study we investigate whether question context matters, by exploring whether economic and psychology approaches yield a similar understanding of community preferences towards a large-scale recycled wastewater scheme. We find that stated preferences differ depending on whether the preference question is contextualised using economic incentives. The findings provide insight into the implications of inappropriately contextualised preference questions, methodological considerations in attitude identification and estimation, and the diversity of values and public attitudes towards recycled wastewater.