A Study on the Impact of Environmental Education on Individuals’ Behaviors Concerning Recycled Water Reuse

Abstract

In order to verify whether environmental education can play guiding role among the individuals in terms of the reuse of recycled water, and to further confirm its mechanism of action, a structural equation model was established in this study regarding to the influence of knowledge about recycled water on acceptability of recycled water. Besides, a survey was made among 714 individuals. The structural equation model revealed that high levels of knowledge about recycled water stimulate individuals' trust in water authorities, and reduce their perceived risk of recycled water. More specially, knowledge about recycled water was reported to be a significant predictor of individuals' acceptability of recycled water. Individuals' high levels knowledge about recycled water can affect their acceptability of recycled water indirectly through two different ways, while high levels knowledge about recycled water can reduce the individuals' perceived risk of recycled water, so it could increase their acceptability of recycled water indirectly. Another influence path is that high levels knowledge about recycled water could reduce individuals' perceived risk of recycled water by improving their trust in the water authorities, and ultimately improve their acceptability of recycled water. In this paper, it has proved that environmental education has significance guiding effect on individuals in terms of the use of recycled water, and provided a clue as how does environmental education affects individuals' behavior to use recycled water.

Modeling spatial dependence and economic hotspots in landowners’ willingness to supply bioenergy crops in the northeastern United States

“…Age does not significantly influence the Miscanthus supply decision but does negatively influence switchgrass and willow supply decisions, which is consistent with the result of Joshi and Mehmood (), implying that older farmers may have less time to learn (and reap) the benefits of a new crop; hence, they may also be less willing to adopt a new crop (Tyndall, Berg, & Colletti, ). Education has a strong impact on the landowners’ willingness—people who have a college degree are more likely to supply compared to landowners who have a high school degree or less, which is consistent with the literature on the adoption of new agricultural technology (Fu & Liu, ; Fu et al., ; Jensen et al., ; Mooney et al., ). We also noticed that an increase in the distance to the nearest pellet facility negatively influences landowners’ decisions to grow bioenergy crops.…”

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“…That is, residents are unwilling to accept recycled water reuse because it is produced from polluted water. Though the pollution can be removed through sewage treatment, the treatment technology has no way to remove the prejudice deeper in residents' minds [21][22][23]. Because the water resources and environmentally friendly features of recycled water are connected with those positive concepts of environment protection and public benefit, the attitude towards recycled water reuse naturally is more connected with a person's reputation and face [24].…”

Research on Big Data Digging of Hot Topics about Recycled Water Use on Micro-Blog Based on Particle Swarm Optimization

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