Categorizing relative water use perception bias using household surveys and monthly water bills.

We introduce the concept of relative water use perception bias to highlight the role of human relationships, social cues, and the built environment in household water consumption. Although previous studies have explored actual water use, it is also important to understand how people perceive their relative behaviors because humans are social animals and act in relation to each other. We combine household survey responses and water utility bills in a large sample of households to quantify the degree of over- and under-estimation bias in perceived relative household water use. We then use multi-level nested regression models to investigate four categories of potential influence: sociodemographic characteristics, perceived social norms, neighborhood characteristics, and water bill information. Results show that most households tended to view themselves as 'better than average' water users when they actually used more water compared to neighbors. Respondents in high-income households and those who are more concerned about water shortages were more likely to underestimate their relative water use (using comparatively more than they thought). However, in more suburbanized neighborhood environments, households were more likely to overestimate their relative water use (using comparatively less than they thought). We call the inaccuracy in assessing water usage compared to their neighbors' relative water use perception bias. We propose that a better understanding of this bias can aid the design of policy initiatives like neighborhood planning, better water bill design, targeted messaging, and social signaling. By bringing a relational lens to bear on water conservation studies, understanding relative water use perception bias sheds new light on the complex drivers of household water consumption.

Why climate migration is not managed retreat: Six justifications.

This perspective piece makes a case for a more rigorous treatment of managed retreat as a politically, legally, and economically distinct type of relocation that is separate from climate migration. We argue that the use of both concepts interchangeably obfuscates the problems around climate-induced mobilities and contributes to the inconsistencies in policy, plans, and actions taken by governments and organizations tasked with addressing them. This call for a disentanglement is not solely an academic exercise aimed at conceptual clarity, but an effort targeted at incentivizing researchers, practitioners, journalists, and advocates working on both issues to better serve their constituencies through alliance formation, resource mobilization, and the establishment of institutional pathways to climate justice. We offer a critical understanding of the distinctions between climate migration and managed retreat grounded in six orienting propositions. They include differential: causal mechanisms, legal protections, rights regimes and funding structures, discursive effects, implications for land use, and exposure to risks. We provide empirical examples from existing literature to contextualize our propositions while calling for a transformative justice approach to addressing both issues.

Expanding collaborative autoethnography into the world of natural science for transdisciplinary teams.

Wicked problems such as climate change and the COVID-19 pandemic require authentically transdisciplinary approaches to achieving effective collaboration. There exist several research approaches for identifying the components and interactions of complex problems; however, collaborative autoethnography provides an empirical way to collect and analyze self-reflection that leads to transformative change. Here, we present a case study of collaborative autoethnography, applied as a tool to transform research practice among a group of natural and social scientists, by constructively revealing and resolving deep, often unseen, disciplinary divides. We ask, "How can natural and social scientists genuinely accept, respect, and share one another's approaches to work on the wicked problems that need to be solved?" This study demonstrates how disciplinary divisions can be successfully bridged by open-minded and committed collaborators who are prepared to recognize the academic bias they bring to their research and use this as a platform of strength.

A multilevel analysis of the drivers of household water consumption in a semi-arid region.

Communities across the Western United States face the growing challenge of managing water resources in the face of rapid population growth and climate change. There are two contrasting approaches to understanding and managing residential water demand in this context. Many scientists and water managers see water use as a reflection of individual attitudes and decisions where people are assumed to have the agency to act independently of structural constraints. Conversely, other scientists and policymakers focus on the importance of the built environment and the broader social, economic, and policy contexts within which households make water decisions. Using multilevel models, we compared attitudinal, demographic, and structural drivers of indoor and outdoor residential water use for a sample of households in Northern Utah. We estimated multilevel mixed-effect Poisson models with robust standard errors using matched household survey data with metered residential water use records. Outdoor water use had a substantially greater amount of neighborhood-level variation than indoor water use. Structural factors generally eclipsed individual agency in our analysis. While indoor use was most strongly predicted by household size, tenure status, and length of residence, outdoor water use was most associated with the built environment (lot size and the presence of vegetable gardens and underground sprinklers), socioeconomic status (household income, rental status), and residents' sensitivity to lawn watering norms. Higher water prices were associated with lower water use, with lower-income households being more responsive to prices than higher-income households. Our findings have important implications for water managers and policymakers.