Interpreting householder preferences to evaluate water supply systems:An attitudinal model

[摘要] Introduction:As current water supply systems in Australia become increeasingly under stress, the need for supplementing these supplies is at the forefront of water utility planning, and community expectations.In the past, the introduction and implementation of traditional water supply systems and source augmentation have been accompanied with minimal or no community involvement.Typically, water managers have assumed that the supplementary supplies would be accepted by consumers due to demands for more water.Recently, however, the community has displayed increasing interest in proposed sources and , in some cases, has expressed concerns over the choice of some, and even rejected potential new supplies (eg. Nancarrow et al., 2003). At present, the key components of perceived preferred future water supplyyalternatives and the reasons for these preferences are not well understood.For example, how does one explain the tendency for large scale systems not to be preferred by a community who also has concerns about small scale systems and the reliability of their management?While it is understood that the success of new technologies is dependent on incorporating householder preferences and improving understanding within our communities, no research to date has attempted to examine acceptance of a new water supply system in a holistic manner.The development of an attitudinally-based model that captures the factors that may determine consumer acceptance of potential future water supply systems and technologies can help urban development planners, catchment planners and other decision makers to amke choices that are acceptable to the community.They hypothesised model proposed here has been developed based on what is already known about community preferences in relation to water services, by a study team that has over twenty years of experience working with the community and the water industry in Australia.It takes into account benefits and costs to consumers' quality of life, levels of water service provision, equity in sharing, and risk and trust perceptions in assessing the acceptability of a water supply system.This hypothesised model will be tested and developed using both current and proposed future water supply systems, and applying path analytic and structural equation modelling analysis, whichh attempts to map the relationships between the above variables.This report presents the results of a research program designed to explore and develop the hypothesised model using real case studies.The research involved an exploratory stage with a focus group held in Perth to better understand the community's outcome variables associated with a variety of water supply systems and to test some of the variable measures.This was followed by a preliminary assessment of the relationship of the variables and their measures in the hypothesised model, and the consistency across two potential future case studies, on two scales, in Perth.Finally, the model was tested to provide an assessment of the current Melbourne metropolitan water supply system.This research was conducted by the CSIRO Australian Research Centre for water in Society as part of the Water for a Healthy Country Flagship Program.The project is aligned under the Urban Waterscapes Program whose goal is to create Australia's water-smart cities of tomorrow.

[发布机构] CSIRO

[学科分类] 地球科学(综合)