The role played by environmental concern and institutional trust in changing public preferences for water management

Abstract

Efforts to improve the efficiency of irrigation systems in areas which suffer from water scarcity have often failed to reduce water demand owing to the constant expansion of irrigation. Andalusia, in southern Spain, is a clear case in point, as the publicly funded programs aimed at improving irrigation put forward since the 1990s after recurrent episodes of drought have not been able to meet agrarian demand. This situation has generated an active debate among stakeholders and public managers. This study aims to investigate the role of public opinion in this debate, as demanded by new water governance models, embodied in the Water Framework Directive. We use the results of a representative annual survey in Andalusia between 2004 and 2013. First, we analyze the evolution of public support for the two most costly public measures: constructing reservoirs and improving irrigation. Second, we analyze some attitudes that may have affected a change in public opinion, including institutional trust and environmental concern. The results suggest that the public legitimizes the administration's bid for more efficient irrigation systems, essentially for environmental reasons. However, should attempts to control water demand continue to fail, support for this measure may be withdrawn.

How Can We Improve Air Pollution?: Try Increasing Trust First

“…Our results complement a recent literature demonstrating that environmental policy preferences are influenced by trust in institutions, authorities, and other citizens, such as family, friends, and neighbors (Hammar and Jagers, 2006;Konisky et al, 2008;Jagers et al, 2010;Fairbrother, 2016;Kulin and Johansson Sevä, 2020). Specifically, trust is correlated with citizens' willingness to support taxes to curb pollution and climate change (Hammar and Jagers, 2006;Harring, 2013;Harring and Jagers, 2013;Birol and Das, 2012;Fairbrother, 2016;Xu and Li, 2016;Kulin and Johansson Sevä, 2020) and trust plays a role in determining the set of policies that individuals are willing to support (Zannakis et al, 2015;Lafuente et al, 2018;Harring, 2018). Similarly, government quality plays an important role in determining individuals' willingness to pay environmental taxes (Davidovic et al, 2020).…”

“…Most of the literature is from the United States(Konisky et al, 2008;Dincer and Fredriksson, 2018), Europe(Hammar and Jagers, 2006;Harring, 2014;Zannakis et al, 2015;Volland, 2017;Harring, 2018;Lafuente et al, 2018), and China(Sun et al, 2016;Zhong and Hwang, 2016;Dong and Zeng, 2018;Gong et al, 2017).14 Trust as the basis of cooperation in the provision of public goods has a long tradition in the literature, including in environmental issues(Cardenas and Ostrom, 2004;Gächter et al, 2004;Bouma et al, 2008;Irwin et al, 2015).…”

A systematic review on the role of trust in the water governance literature

“…Although it is theoretically expected that trust may manifest itself as a predictor as well as an outcome of water governance processes ( Edelenbos and van Meerkerk, 2015 ; Klijn et al., 2010 ; Stern and Coleman, 2015 ), our findings show that the extant literature particularly focusses on approaching trust as an explanatory variable. This focus on trust as an explanatory variable comes together with a tendency in several of the articles that we analysed to assume that trust is an attitude which comes with positive consequences for establishing sustainable (long-term) cooperation in (water governance) processes that require collective action ( Hamm et al., 2013 ; Lafuente et al., 2018 [ID 206]; Lubell, 2007 [ID 225]; Stern and Baird, 2015 ; van Meerkerk and Edelenbos, 2014 ). A textual analysis of the articles with stated research questions/goals and of the content of the directional claims that have been made on trust further revealed the omnipresence of instrumentally motivated reasons to engage with trust.…”

“…Trust between stakeholders is a means to deal with the complexity and uncertainty of interactions as the need to continuously monitor and enforce future actions will be less imminent under conditions of mutual trust ( Lubell, 2007 ; Onencan et al., 2018 ). Therefore, it is assumed that trust facilitates long term collaboration ( Stern and Baird, 2015 ) and fosters cooperation and compliance by both the wider public and stakeholders directly involved with public policies and environmental management practices ( Lafuente et al., 2018 ; Stern, 2008 ).…”

How can we improve air pollution? Try increasing trust first

“…, 2015; Harring, 2018; Lafuente et al. , 2018). Similarly, government quality plays an important role in determining individuals’ willingness to pay environmental taxes (Davidovic et al.…”