Going with the flow : social context, uncertainty and decision-making

Climate change, pollution of freshwater sources, swelling populations, increased per capita consumption, as well as political policies are all threatening water security in communities worldwide. Successful direct and indirect alternative water source AWS projects have been implemented in many different countries. However these projects have frequently encountered strong community opposition and failure despite initially receiving favourable support from potential users. And often, while people have seen the benefit of an AWS project for the community as a whole, individuals have been reluctant to use water from alternative sources themselves. The AWS literature has given limited attention to social-psychological factors that may be linked to this resistance. This thesis addresses that gap by examining two AWS uses: drinking and the washing of hands. It does so from the perspective of emotions and two national cultures, US American and Indian. Previous work has demonstrated that culture substantially determines social-moral emotions as well as the degree to which people use emotions to make decisions. Here these findings are applied to better understand how AWS use likelihood is associated with the social factors of risk-benefit perceptions, expert information, the social-moral symbolism of water, and social trust as well as the psychological factors of uncertainty attitudes, decision styles and social-moral identities. Some risk and benefit perceptions were moderately correlated with likelihood of use although overall these relationships were stronger for the US American samples. The other social-psychological factors considered were found to be either weakly or indirectly linked with AWS use likelihood. However, what was common to all of these factors was a relationship with attention to emotions. Based on these findings, agent based models defined with a subset of these social-psychological characteristics were then developed. Simulations of emergent judgments and likely use of AWS in response to changing external conditions suggest that judgments and likely use are dynamically defined by the flow of human emotions. In the wake of these findings, a social-moral decision-making hypothesis is proposed.

Author dc:creator

• Stewart, Lisa Ellen

• climate change
• pollution
• freshwater sources
• water security
• political policies
• alternative water source AWS
• social-psychological factors
• America
• India
• culture

Language dc:language.iso

en

Dc Identifier Other

b3732720

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:openresearch-repository.anu.edu.au:1885/110684