How to Address Consumers’ Concerns and Information Needs about Emerging Chemical and Microbial Contaminants in Drinking Water; The Case of GenX in The Netherlands

The perceived safety of tap water is an important condition for consumers to drink it. Therefore, addressing consumers’ concerns should be included in the roadmap towards the UN SDG 6 on safe drinking water for all. This paper studies consumers’ information needs regarding emerging contaminants in drinking water using a mental model approach for the development of targeted risk communication. As most consumers expect safe drinking water, free of contamination, communication on emerging contaminants may increase concerns. Here, we showed that communication strategies better tailored to consumer... Mehr ...

Verfasser: Liesbeth Claassen
Julia Hartmann
Susanne Wuijts
Dokumenttyp: Text
Erscheinungsdatum: 2021
Verlag/Hrsg.: Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute
Schlagwörter: drinking water / emerging contaminants / mental models / risk perception / risk communication
Sprache: Englisch
Permalink: https://search.fid-benelux.de/Record/base-27198789
Datenquelle: BASE; Originalkatalog
Powered By: BASE
Link(s) : https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph182010615

The perceived safety of tap water is an important condition for consumers to drink it. Therefore, addressing consumers’ concerns should be included in the roadmap towards the UN SDG 6 on safe drinking water for all. This paper studies consumers’ information needs regarding emerging contaminants in drinking water using a mental model approach for the development of targeted risk communication. As most consumers expect safe drinking water, free of contamination, communication on emerging contaminants may increase concerns. Here, we showed that communication strategies better tailored to consumers’ information needs result in smaller increases in risk perception compared with existing strategies.