Public perceptions and acceptance of SUDS in a district park
Raising awareness, in order to engender public acceptance and behaviour change with respect to sustainable water management is often used despite ambiguity regarding the success of such campaigns, (Syme et al., 2000). This paper explores a new approach to researching and implementing awareness raising campaigns with respect to WSUDS in the UK within a multidisciplinary context.
For WSUDS to be implemented public acceptance is necessary, not least because public behaviour e.g. disposal of unsuitable substances, can impede the successful functioning of a system. Social psychology can provide the theoretical framework and methodology necessary for understanding what constitutes an effective awareness-raising project facilitating public acceptance of WSUDS.
The case study involves an inner city district park in Sheffield, UK, in which a recently constructed wetland treatment train is situated. For WSUDS to be successful in this context, residents need to understand that function is contingent on their behaviour and for them to subsequently act in consideration of this knowledge. The main objective in conducting a project to raise awareness in this situation is to reduce incidences of road gulley pollution such as waste oil disposal through public acceptance and understanding.
The Sheffield site is the subject of multi-disciplinary research, which recognises successful sustainable solutions involve integrating multiple issues. This paper describes the social science aspect of this project, which concerns best how to communicate with people likely to impede the implementation of WSUDS. To that end a theoretical framework and methodology, able to provide insight into multi-faceted nature of human behaviour, specifically in terms of WSUDS, is devised and tested.
Because motivation for volitional behaviour is essentially socially driven we need to understand the processes by which people identify themselves with others and make sense of the world. These processes involve interpersonal communication, are dynamic, ongoing and intimately linked, inspiring powerful motivation to behave in ways conforming to the shared beliefs of the social group with which the individual identifies.
Equally important is understanding that, however, strongly an individual is motivated to conform to ‘social norms and a consensus of ‘common sense’, if they lack self-efficacy with respect to a specific behaviour, they are unlikely to act in accordance with that motivation. Therefore, explanation of changes in people’s awareness and behaviour requires understanding motivation in terms of the individual, the social context, and how consensus of ‘common sense’ changes overtime. The theories providing this explanation are self-efficacy, (Bandura, 1982), social identification, (Hogg and Abrams, 1988), and social representations, (Moscovici, 1981) respectively.
The theoretical framework described has certain methodological requirements, the most dominant being ecological validity, meaning in this context that research relates to ‘real-life’. Traditionally it is considered necessary to separate ‘research methods’ from the ‘research subject’. The challenge with this investigation is how to research people’s awareness of a phenomenon, when the research itself is likely to change people’s awareness. This challenge is met by adopting action research, whereby the research itself is acknowledged as the awareness raising process, taking the form of an information campaign collaboratively devised between participants and researchers. In this way the social context in which the research is conducted has integrity, thereby ensuring ecological validity.
Analysis of qualitative data generated by longitudinal, action research, involving in-depth, open interviews, children’s drawings, and participatory observation, provides, 1) evaluation of the explanatory power of the theoretical framework and methodology described, and, 2) comprehensive understanding of how changes in people’s awareness and behaviour occur with respect to WSUDS in a specific situation.
This approach to researching what and how perceptions and behaviours change in respect to an awareness raising project of WSUDS addresses the challenge of public acceptance, often considered a major impediment to implementing WSUD. Moreover, conducting this research within a multi-disciplinary context facilitates holistic understanding of how the multiple issues involved in water management can be integrated, and demonstrates how essential it is for engineers to work with psychologists in order that successful sustainable solutions are discovered.
Bandura, A. (1982) Self-Efficacy Mechanism in Human Agency. American Psychologist, 37(2), 122-147.
Hogg, M. A. and Abrams, D. (1988) Social identifications: a social psychology of intergroup relations and group processes. London and New York: Routledge.
Moscovici, S. (1981) On social representations. In: Social Cognition: Perspectives on everyday understanding. (Ed, Forges, J. P.) London: Academic Press, pp. 181 - 209.
Syme, G. J., et al. (2000) The evaluation of information campaigns to promote voluntary household water conservation. Evaluation Review, 24(6), 539-578.