Albury residents concerns about water conservation and salinity

¹Jonathon Howard and ²Daryl McGregor

¹Charles Sturt University, PO Box 789, Albury, NSW Australia 2640, Ph: 0260519685, Ph: 0260519897, email: jhoward@csu.edu.au

²Albury City Council, 553 Kiewa St, Albury, NSW Australia 2640

1. About this report

Along with other parts of the world, Albury-Wodonga faces a water use dilemma. The Murray-Darling Basin Commission now caps all extractions for the Murray River. To avoid water restrictions and provide for a growing city, it is necessary for everyone to use water Wisely. With some degree of vision, Albury City Council has been at the forefront of local government in terms of education campaigns designed to address the local water conservation issues. It has initiated a highly successful phoswatch program, and is now moving to other issues such as salinity awareness and water wastage.

This report presents the findings of the attitudes, concerns and behaviours of residents in Albury, Wodonga and Hume Shire concerning water conservation and salinity. The report was commissioned by Albury Council and had two broad objectives. Firstly to monitor progress with its water conservation education programs, and secondly to provide a benchmark for dryland salinity issues in the region.

As number of ideas and models have been put forward concerning the concept of everyday behaviours as a form of environmental conservation it was decided to use the survey to explore these models in order to identify critical factors that influence peoples behaviour. So as well as provide a range of quantitative data, the survey also sought to assist in the planning of future education campaigns. The specific objectives of this study were:

• determine changes in the public’s attitudes and behaviour towards water conservation since the first survey in 1998;
• to identify critical socio/psychological variables involved water conservation behaviour that may assist in planning future education campaigns;
• to determine if people’s motivation to undertake water conservation behaviour are different for rural and urban residents; and
• to assess people awareness of salinity problem in the region.

2. Background to the Salinity problem

The term salinity refers to the concentration of dissolved salts in soil or water, of which the majority are chlorides and sulphates (Smith and Finlayson 1988). The main impact of salinity is that plants have difficulty extracting water from the soil, and even low level of salinity can damage sensitive crops.

Although salinity does occur naturally, salinity caused by land use changes is increasingly becoming a problem. For example, Australia has about 29 million ha of land is naturally affected by salinity however, about 156,000 ha of irrigation land is now unproductive because of salinisation and another 650000 ha is in danger (White 1997). The land use changes causing this problem are the clearing of deep-rooted trees and shrubs with shallow rooted pastures, over- irrigation, and the disruption of natural drainage. The cost of salinity to agricultural production in the Murray-Darling basin exceeds $260 million a year and $65 million for water supply problems (White 1997).

While dryland salinity has long been recognised as a significant problem across the Murray Darling Basin, only recently has it become apparent that dryland salinity is becoming a very serious and costly problem in many rural towns. More than fifty towns in the Murray-Darling Basin are currently affected by urban salinity. These towns include Albury-Wodonga, Bendigo, Boorowra, Dubbo, Grenfell, Yass, Wagga Wagga, and Wellington. Many of the residents of these towns do not know of the problem or that it may develop into a serious problem in the near future. Clearly good understanding of salinity is essential for managing the problem in rural and urban areas.

Surveys consistently show that urban stakeholders generally have a low awareness of the nature of urban salinity. Improving the knowledge of the nature of salinity in urban and rural communities will enable the communities to both recognise and monitor the problem and develop strategies to combat it. This survey provides data on the level of awareness within the community of salinity so as to provide a benchmark for future study.

3. Socio/Psychological Variables used for the survey

Initial efforts to explain conservation behaviour focused on attitudes as the explanatory variable. However there are now numerous studies to show a discrepancy between people’s attitudes and behaviours. Studies are now exploring how other factors as well as attitudes may be linked to individual participation. These other elements are often arranged into models to explain conventional forms of participation in which mobilisation is activated motivated and barriers to participate are overcome. Most notable of these models is the theory of reasoned action (Fishbein and Ajzen ). The theory that suggests actual behaviour is a function of behavioural intention and attitude and social norms influence that behavioural intention.

A range of variables was selected for this survey. Specifically the first part of the survey assessed the links between the psychological dimensions of beliefs, attitudes, knowledge, and the social dimensions of moral obligation and social norms, with actual behaviour for rural and urban residents towards water conservation.

As the concept of ‘attitude’ is broad, we measured it using a number of variables. Firstly, we assessed beliefs (broad sets of attitudes) by asking respondents to rank the environment compared to 10 other local issues such as unemployment and health, and then asked them to rank the strength of this belief on a ten point scale from 1 (not concerned) to 10 (greatly concerned). Asking respondents to nominate a specific environmental issue in the local area and whether people thought water conservation was an important local issue assessed a specific attitude.

Social aspects were assessed in two ways. Perceived moral obligation was assessed asking people to choose from two statements: “Each of us as individuals must take responsibility for doing all we can to conserve the environment” or “Governments and businesses have a greater role than individuals in taking responsibility for conserving the environment”. While asking people to nominate any other particular people or groups of people that have influenced water conservation behaviours assessed social norm.

We asking people whether they thought they could do more to reduce water use assessed behavioural intention.

In terms of actual behaviour we asked people the 3 most effective things they were undertaking to conserve water. These responses were categorised as either economic (such as installing water saving devices) or behavioural (such as taking shorter showers).

A second part of the study tested whether rural and urban people have different motivations towards water conservation behaviours. Little attention has been given to everyday behaviours as forms of environmental participation. Showering, watering the garden, and using low phosphorus detergents can all be done in ways that lessen their environmental impacts and these are three key messages used in the education campaigns by Albury Council. To test our hypothesis, three questions in this survey asking how often people undertook these three different water-conserving behaviours. Then for each of these three simple water conservation behaviours (washing, watering, and low-phosphorus detergents) a following question asked whether people did it primarily to save money, good for the environment or what they were taught to do. In addition people were asked to identify if they were part of a social movement. This regarded as being in contact with organisations (eg. farmers or conservation organisations) that form part of a collective action or support for that collective action. To address this aspect, this survey asked a number of questions regarding respondents involvement with such social organisations and their level of agreement with their aims.

4. Methodology

Our investigation into the water conservation and salinity employed multiple methods. The backbone of which included a mail survey to 600 residents. A total of 474 responses were obtained.

More sample surveys are done by mail than by any other survey method. Two major reasons for the extensive use of mail survey methods are: there are lower costs for completing them, and that procedures have been standardised and simplified enough so that individuals and organisations can obtain a rigorous sample. The literature on survey methodology is now volumous (Dillman 1991).

The mail survey adopted recognised standard procedures (the Total Design Method) for conducting such research. The Total Design Method (Dillman 1978) utilises social exchange theory to guide the careful integration of specific procedures and techniques. The theoretical framework using in this approach posits that questionnaire recipients are more likely to respond if they expect the perceived benefits of doing so outweigh the perceived costs. The questionnaire had three parts addressing people’s water conservation behaviour, awareness of salinity, and motivations regarding specific water conservation behaviours. These were ordered to ensure the topic described in the cover letter came first. The survey was also presented to make the reading and answering of questions easy. Respondents received three regularly spaced mailings, including a postcard one week after the original mailing, and a replacement survey and cover letter seven weeks after the initial survey.

4.1 Survey Error

The sample survey is distinguished from other methods by its ability to estimate quantitatively the distribution of a characteristic in a population, and to accomplish this by obtaining information from only a small proportion of that population. To obtain significant and valid data from sample, a researcher has to contend with four sources of error: sampling error, non-coverage error, non-response error and measurement error. Sampling error occurs because some members of the population are deliberately excluded. This survey has minimised sampling error by randomly obtaining 474 respondents, which, given the total sample size, should provide accuracy within 5 percentage points. Non-coverage error arises because some members of the population are excluded from the sampling frame. This survey was limited to people on the electoral roll, but to check for any non-coverage error a comparative sample was also taken via fifty phone surveys. Non-response error stems from the problem that some people do not respond to mail surveys. Adopting a proven and standardised approach to the mail survey reduced this. Measurement error refers to the discrepancy between survey responses and underlying, unobserved variables. To reduce this bias the study adopted a mixed method approach and conducted phone interviews as well as mail interviews. The phone surveys showed not differences in responses between phone and mail responses.

5. Results Part 1- changes in the public’s attitudes and behaviour towards water conservation since 1998

5.1 Overall attitudes:

Those surveyed were asked to nominate from a list of ten issues the two most important for the region. The environment was ranked as the highest priority for 27% of all people. This is a six-percent increase from 1998.

Since 1998 residents have increased their relative concern for the environment. It is now ranked second. This is unusual in that most other surveys of attitudes of Australians, including the one conducted in 1998 in Albury, find that the environment is ranked behind major economic concerns. That was not found for this survey.

Issue	2000%	1998%
Health	41.8	25.8
Environment	30.8	21.9
Unemployment	11.45	56
Alcohol and drugs	18.69	21.9
Farming and Agriculture	18.69	6
Education	15.3	16%
Economic growth	12.5	10.4
Crime	10.7	23.9
Transport	10.00	7.1
Not sure	4.6

The NSW EPA (1997) survey of NSW ranked the top five issues as being: ‘unemployment’, ‘health’, ‘education’, ‘crime’ and ‘the environment’. In comparison this survey, shows that ‘the environment’ is more of a priority to local residents.

The importance of environmental issues ranked on a ten-point scale was high (avg=7.62+/-1.87). This is similar to the score in 1998 (7.5+-1.8). Like the last survey twenty percent of residents gave it the maximum score of 10 points. People stating the environment as one of the most important issues for the region gave it the highest score on the 1-10 scale (avg=8.3). Those who listed farming and agriculture (avg=7.0) or being not sure (avg=6.9) gave the environment the lowest average on the 10-point score.

5.2 Specific Nature of Environmental Attitudes

Those surveyed were asked (unprompted) to nominate the most important environmental issues in the region today. Most responses could be broadly grouped into:

• Water quality
• Water quantity
• Salinity
• Transport

Responses seem to show a decline in importance of the bypass issue in the last two years, but a higher level of education about this issue. For example a large number of respondent specifically stated car emissions or truck emissions were a major local issue.

Results between rural and urban residents both show water to be an important issue. However salinity was of greater importance to rural people, while the bypass was a greater issue for urban residents. Other important issues for rural residents were pines, weeds, and erosion. A much greater number of urban residents stated they were not sure what was the most important local issue.

Table 2: Environmental priorities for residents

Issue	% responses 1999	% responses 2000
Noise (%)	1%	0%
Biota	2%	4%
1st priority	Biodiveristy/habitat loss	Biodiveristy/habitat loss
2nd priority	Lack of green space	Weeds
Water	50%	49%
1st priority	Water quality/pollution	Water quality/pollution
2nd priority	Water quantity/flows	Condition of river/creeks
3rd priority	Phosphorus/ Blue green algae	Water use/ over use
	Water use/ over use	Phosphorus/ Blue green algae
Waste	14%	6%
1st priority	Litter/Waste	Litter/Waste
2nd priority	Recycling	Recycling
Transport	18%	11%
1st priority	Bypass	Bypass
Health	1%	0
Land Use	7%	26%
1st priority	Dryland salinity	Dryland salinity
2nd priority	Erosion	Incompatible land use
Air Pollution	2%	4%
1st priority	Ozone	Car/vehicle emission

5.3 Water Conservation as an Issue

Eighty one percent of respondents stated they thought water conservation was becoming an issue. There was no significant difference in this response between urban and rural people and males or females.

When qualitative responses were grouped, one third of responses nominated water wastage, while another third nominated irrigation. Other popular themes were overuse (10%), watering gardens and lawns (5%), and domestic use (5%). There were no differences between urban and rural responses for these major issues, however, rural people were the only ones mentioning a need to balance needs or to improve efficiency.

Some of the actual responses clearly correspond with the existing education campaign: “Watering gardens excessively/Dripping taps”, “People washing cars in driveway/excess garden watering” or “Waste of water when it runs in gutters, taps and toilet leaking”. Some had quiet strong views on solutions, for example “restrictions needed during summer” or “Unnecessary use in big cities-houses should have tanks”

Irrigation was clearly an issue: “The amount going to irrigation.”, “Use of water to grow crops like cotton and rice” , “Too much irrigation development allowed for the amount of water available” or “Excessive irrigation, particularly rice and cotton”

Some blamed Councils: “Wasting valuable drinking water waste on parks and sporting fields wastage” or “Council water waste like watering grass areas when its raining”

The Snowy remains a divisive issue: For example “The lack of water going towards the environment eg. Snowy river’ yet “redirection of water down the Snowy to the detriment of water quality and availability downstream in Murray River”

Other interesting responses include; “The whole community has to share in the improving of the delivery of irrigation water eg. underground or piped” , “What right does a land owner have to water that falls on ones property?” And “We all use too much and don't think about wastage”.

5.4 Knowledge about the environment

Knowledge was assessed by asking seven true/false statements taken from the other surveys conducted in the world, by the NSW EPA and on the previous 1998 survey of the region. Three were selected from the EPA’s community surveys for comparative purposes, two specific to Albury’s water conservation education campaign, and another two concerning salinity.

The proportion of respondents who gave correct answers varies considerably from statement to statement. For example most people know about composting and Australia being a dry continent, but fewer people know about greenhouse and salinity.

Knowledge levels for the region appear to be relatively high and stable, although the variation in knowledge about stormwater is significant.

	NSW (1997)	Albury 1998	Albury2 000
Most stormwater drains in NSW run directly into our waterways	81%	89.3%	76%
Oxygen and water are needed for composting to work effectively	65%	81.9%	80%
The greenhouse effect is caused by a hole in the earths atmosphere	30%	58.4%	53%
Australia is one of the direst continents on earth		86.6%	87%
The Murray-Darling Basin Commission has put a cap on water extraction		65.1%	63%
Land salinity occurs naturally in the Murray-Darling Basin			43%
Salinity is caused by rising water tables			81%

5.5 Social Influences

In terms of perceived moral obligation to undertake water conservation behaviours, 76.7% of people agreed that they had a responsibility towards the environment. This compares with 75.2% in 1998.

The importance of various sections of society is also similar. Raw data cannot be directly compared as the 1998 survey concerned a range of environmental behaviours not just water conservation. This explains the greater number of responses in each category during 1998. The data shows that mass media, conservation groups, and Council are key people who influence people’s behaviour. Family and Friends and children also play a key role.

Group	% 2000	%1998
Media	37	49
Conservation groups	24	29
Council	21	31
No one	19	10
Family/Friends	16	20
Children	12	24
Government	5	10
Public Figures	4	6
Schools	4	12
Neighbours	4

5.6 Impacts of education campaign and factors affecting behaviour

Albury Wodonga, other local Councils and various catchment authorities have been running a advertising campaign in regard to water conservation. This appears to be very effective with only 4% of people saying they had not seen anything about water conservation.

Television was most commonly reported (just over one third of responses) with the paper also being important (twenty percent of responses). Brochures sent by the local authority (eg North east Catchment Authority, Albury City Council) were reported by ten percent of respondents and the impact of new water charges were reported by ten percent of urban people.

There were significant differences in the information received by urban and rural people. While television was popular for both groups, Country people did not report the water bill or seeing empty reservoirs as a source of information. Furthermore a significantly higher number of country people left this question blank.

The self-reported impact of these various media on people was relatively similar in that they generally made people think about saving water and felling like they were not doing enough. The exception to this being the change in water rates which annoyed a large number of people.

Media	Most common feeling	2nd common feeling	3rd most common feeling
TV ads	Think about doing more	Actually save water	Guilty about not doing enough
TV news	Think about doing more	Actually save water	Guilty about not doing enough
Local paper	Think about doing more	Guilty about not doing enough	Plan to save water
Newspaper reports	Think about doing more	Actually save water	Guilty about not doing enough
Empty reserviours	Think about doing more	Guilty about not doing enough	Actually save water
Brochure	Think about doing more	Actually save water	Guilty about not doing enough
Waterbill	Think about doing more	Annoyed me	Plan to save water

Most people stated that could do more to save water, however, it was only a little bit more. Those people who stated they could do no more stated the reasons why were there was no practical alternative and that they did not make much difference. Those that stated they could do a lot more said that it was a lack of understanding and apathy that were the problem. Those who said they could do a bit or some more said there was no alternative, cost and convenience were the issue.

Could you do more more	percentage
A bit more	31.6
Some more	29.9
No more	21.9
A lot more	9.4
Not sure	7

5.7 What are people doing to conserve water

Two thirds of respondents listed at least three things they were doing to conserve water. Twenty percent of people did not list anything. This is a slight increase from the previous survey in 1998.

The vast majority of responses were behavioural in nature such as taking shorter showers (20%), washing car on the grass or lawn (20%), making sure there were no dripping taps (20%) and water gardens in evenings. Other common responses include mulching the garden, washing less or with full loads, composting, and Hand watering. Ths is also similar to the years results two year ago

Results Part 2- the critical socio/psychological variables involved water conservation behaviour

Results Part 3 - peoples motivation to undertake water conservation behaviour in rural and urban areas

Results Part 4- Peoples awareness of salinity problem in the region.

References

White, M.E. (1997) Listen… Our land is crying. Kangaroo Press, Kenthurst , NSW.

Smith, D.I. and Finlayson, B (1988) Water in Australia: its role in environmental degradation. In Heathcote, R.L., Mabutt, J.A. (eds) Land, water and people: geographical essays in Australian resource management. Allen and Unwin. North Sydney

Dillman , D.A. 1978 mail and Telephone surveys: the total design Method. New York: Wiley & Sons

Dillman , D.A. 19991 The design and administration of mail surveys Annual Review of Sociology. 17:225-49

• This report provides an update on the a survey to residents about water and salinity issues in Albury and Wodonga.
• This study surveyed a randomly selected cross-section of people living in Albury electorate during March-April 2000. 700 residents have received the mail survey and a total of 250 of the responses have obtained. There is the final follow up to be conducted which will occur this week. This should take the sample up to about 300, which is regarded as adequate. To check for bias in the results there will be a phone interview with a sub-sample of non-respondents also occurring this week.
• It has become apparent from the preliminary analysis that there is an need for qualitative data. For example, many people simply wrote as a solution to salinity as “plant trees”. We are therefore going to conduct interviews of 10 residents in the city and ten in urban areas to understand whether they do know how to recognise salinity and how much they know about solutions to the problem.
• This means that we will have completed conducting all surveys by the end of this week.
• A student has been doing the data entry for the study. Unfortunately, due to family problems no more data has been entered.
• However, the results at this stage do show that water quality is a major concern to the local people. Ranked as high as issues such as unemployment etc. Images they have of salinity appear to be quite dramatic media images (eg. salt pans) rather than from real life experiences. People also know only quite simplistic responses to solving salinity problems.
• Attached is a report from the University of Western Sydney on peoples views of salinity for your information.