Jennifer Price

Supporters and Opponents of Potable Recycled Water: Culture and Cognition in the Toowoomba Referendum

Public opposition to potable recycled water remains an implementation barrier. A potable recycled water scheme was rejected in a referendum by the Toowoomba community of Queensland, Australia. Toowoomba is treated here as a case study. Focus groups were undertaken with supporters and opponents of recycled water to qualitatively explore influences on their voting behavior in the referendum. The theoretical frameworks of cultural theory and motivated social cognition are used together to analyze the values, beliefs, and psychological needs shaping recycled water attitudes and policy preferences. The results illustrate how popular value-basis theories play out at the local level through community recycled water discourse. Differences were observed in attitudes to uncertainty and change, and reliance on worldview arguments. Biases in information processing were revealed, with supporters and opponents selectively attending to information aligned with their own values. Worldview and selective cognition influenced levels of trust in authorities and perceived risk.

Comparing Public Perceptions of Alternative Water Sources for Potable Use: The Case of Rainwater, Stormwater, Desalinated Water, and Recycled Water

This research investigated how people’s perceptions of alternative water sources compare with their perceptions of other technologies, and identified significant predictors of comfort with different alternative water sources. We drew on data from four questionnaire survey studies with a total sample of more than 1200 Australian participants. Relative levels of comfort with the alternative water sources was consistent across the four studies: comfort was always highest for drinking rainwater and lowest for drinking recycled water, with comfort with drinking treated stormwater and desalinated water sitting between these two. Although comfort with drinking recycled water was always lowest of the four alternative water sources, participants were significantly more comfortable with drinking recycled water than they were with nuclear energy, or with using genetically modified plants and animals for food. In general, demographic variables were less important predictors of comfort with alternative water sources than were psychological variables; only age and gender emerged as relatively consistent predictors for recycled water, stormwater, and desalinated water, with older participants and males more comfortable with drinking these water sources. Of the psychological variables, participants’ comfort with technology in general, trust in science and trust in government emerged consistently as significant positive predictors of comfort with drinking recycled water, stormwater, and desalinated water.

Using social representations theory to make sense of climate change: what scientists and nonscientists in Australia think

The mass media has ensured that the challenging and complex phenomenon of climate change now has the household familiarity of a brand name. But what is it that is understood by climate change, and by whom? What frame of reference is drawn upon to communicate meaningfully about climate change? Do particular subgroups within our society hold different understandings, or have the debate and the prolific dissemination of information about this issue coalesced around a core perception or image of what climate change is? To answer these questions, we conceptualized climate change within the theory of social representations as emergent socially constructed knowledge. We analyzed word association data collected in Australia from persons identifying as having a scientific, government, or general public background (N = 3300). All respondents were asked to write the first words that came to mind when they thought about climate change. Comparative analyses of the word associations reveal that respondents from different backgrounds define climate change in different ways. The results suggest that there is a common core set of concepts shared by the different groups, but there are also a great many differences in how climate change is framed and conceived by respondents. The results are discussed in relation to what they imply for responses to climate change by these social groups and in relation to interventions designed to encourage climate adaptation.

Key Influences on the Adoption of Improved Land Management Practice in Rural Australia: The Role of Attitudes, Values and Situation

Abstract The importance of farmers’ values and attributes in their decisions to adopt more sustainable land management practice is receiving greater attention. In this paper we detail research undertaken in two dryland farming regions of central New South Wales, Australia. The research demonstrates the role and influence of landholder attributes and stated environmental values on land management practice in the context of prolonged drought conditions. Two studies were conducted with dryland agriculture farmers ’ a thematic analysis of 61 interviews, and regression modelling based on a survey of 300 land managers. Several key factors contributing to the adoption of sustainable management practice were identified. Findings suggest that farmers’ current enterprise focus is vital in determining receptivity to new farming techniques and incentive programs provided by natural resource management authorities. Results also suggest that a focus on biospheric values and a sense of being able to control one’s destiny are significant precursors to engaging in sustainable land management practice. Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs is used to illustrate barriers to the adoption of recommended land management practice in times of environmental stress and hardship.

Testing the consistency between goals and policies for sustainable development: mental models of how the world works today are inconsistent with mental models of how the world will work in the future

Understanding complex problems such as climate change is difficult for most non‐scientists, with serious implications for decision making and policy support. Scientists generate complex computational models of climate systems to describe and understand those systems and to predict the future states of the systems. Non-scientists generate mental models of climate systems, perhaps with the same aims and perhaps with other aims too. Often, the predictions of computational models and of mental models do not correspond with important implications for human decision making, policy support, and behaviour change. Recent research has suggested non-scientists’ poor appreciation of the simple foundations of system dynamics is at the root of the lack of correspondence between computational and mental models. We report here a study that uses a simple computational model to ‘run’ mental models to assess whether a system will evolve according to our aspirations when considering policy choices. We provide novel evidence of a dual-process model: how we believe the system works today is a function of ideology and worldviews; how we believe the system will look in the future is related to other, more general, expectations about the future. The mismatch between these different aspects of cognition may prevent establishing a coherent link between a mental model’s assumptions and consequences, between the present and the future, thus potentially limiting decision making, policy support, and other behaviour changes.

Citizens’ perception of the resilience of Australian cities

How well does the general public understand the concept of urban resilience? We address this question via an online survey of 500+ citizens living in three large Australian cities (Sydney, Melbourne and Perth). The majority of respondents claim not to know what urban resilience means. Of the remaining respondents, understanding ranges from poor to sophisticated. To circumvent this stated lack of understanding, we cast the concept of urban resilience into a more familiar framework consisting of risk and ability to cope with threats. This allows us to assess perceptions about what may challenge the resilience of Australian cities. Two concerns clearly emerge: (1) violence and social unrest and (2) environmental threats. Analysing a number of constructs from the social psychology literature reveals that these two concerns hold different cognitive signatures, whose understanding may facilitate discussion and communication within a public engagement process.

Myths of the City

Through an online survey, we assessed the views about urban life and urban development of 500 Australian citizens living in three large cities. Differences in perceptions and opinions can be described along three dimensions which, in alignment with cultural theory, we name Myths of the City. The analysis of their relation to a number of constructs from the social cognition literature reveals that each myth has a clear and distinct cognitive signature. The Cultural City Myth combines a positive attitude towards life in large cities and urban growth with concerns about equity, power balance, and social and environmental crises while endorsing larger public participation in urban planning. The Anti-Urban Myth holds a bleak outlook on the future, resulting in a negative view of urban life and urban growth. The Mighty City Myth, endorsed by younger, better educated, less liberal citizens, reflects expectations that all aspects of future life will improve. Surprisingly, the three myths share a small, but statistically significant positive correlation implying that some citizens may simultaneously hold contrasting beliefs about urban issues. Both these results and the use of the questionnaire developed for this study can facilitate public engagement and communication around issues of urban management and policy making.