Tapping into Consumers Perceptions of Health Risks in Municipal Water Supplies

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Tapping into Consumers Perceptions of Health
Risks in Municipal Water Supplies

• November 24, 2005
• Kananaskis Researcher Retreat

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Overall Goal

• Analyze Canadian spending on tap water
  substitutes (bottled and/or filtered water) to
  understand motivations
• Compare consumers' subjective (perceived) risks
  of adverse health outcomes with expert assessment
  of health risks
• Ultimately develop protocol for communicating
  risks

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Research Team

• Diane Dupont, Brock University, Economics
• Vic Adamowicz, University of Alberta, Rural
  Economy
• Alan Krupnick, Resources for the Future,
  Washington DC
• Pierre Payment, INRS Institut Armand Frappier
• Steve Hrudey, University of Alberta
• Ph.D. Student Jing Zhang, University of Alberta

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Key Challenges/Goals

• Developing Strategies to Balance Human and
  Ecosystem Demands for Water
• Developing Water Management Strategies for
  Local/Watershed Scale Applications
• Water Quality Master Planning for the Integration
  of New Infrastructure

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Relevant State-of-The-Research

• Averting Behaviour Model is form of revealed
  preference used to explain why people spend
  money to purchase tap water substitutes perceived
  as being of higher quality
• Methodology to elicit subjective risks
  graphical and numerical representations of extent
  to which believe personal risks are reduced
  through averting expenditures

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Approach

• Analyze data collected from previous survey
  supported by CWN to identify contributing factors
  (e.g., age, income, health, views on perceived
  risks/quality of tap water, previous experience
  with tap water problems, region)
• Compare consumers' subjective risks with expert
  assessment of health risks and calculate gap

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Stage of Research

• Nearing completion of analysis of expenditure
  data to understand driving factors
• Working on research protocol for eliciting
  subjective risks

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Key Findings/Observations

• What are health concerns re tap water?
• High recognition for E coli
• New Brunswick, Québec and Prince Edward Island
  highest belief that E. coli might occur
• In Alberta few believe E coli. a problem

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Key Findings/Observations

• 18 of respondents have either moderate to
  serious health concerns about their tap water,
  while a further 22 have minor concerns
• Alberta and Québec express the least concern
  while residents of PEI and Newfoundland express
  the greatest concern

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Key Findings/Observations

• Degree of concern correlated with past
  experiences with the presence of sediment and/or
  rusty water and presence of children under 18
• Women express more concern

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Key Findings/Observations

• Significant correlation between peoples degree
  of concern and efforts to defend self
• E.g., PEI and NFLD both about 45 filtered, 35
  purchased
• Quebec and Alberta both about 35 filtered,18
  purchased

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Key Findings/Observations

• Average 40.25 per year to own and operate a
  container style device and 166.90 per year for
  each in-tap filtration system owned
• Average spending on bottled water is 216 per
  year
• Compare to average municipal water bill between
  250-400

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Insights on Knowledge Transfer

• US EPA and Health Canada interested in work for
  purposes of calculating value of statistical life
  and value of statistical illness
• Use these in cost-benefit studies as measure of
  health benefits of better water quality assist
  in developing drinking water regulations or
  guidelines

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Opportunities

• Apply for funding to conduct parallel study in US
  to do cross country comparison
• New study will explicitly address issue of how to
  obtain subjective risk assessments to get
  baseline values for each respondent

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Collaborative Interests

• Possible link with climate change policy analysts
  since climate change may alter health risks