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The importance of user acceptance, support, and behaviour change for the implementation of decentralized water technologies

Nature Water volume 1, pages 138–150 (2023)Cite this article

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Abstract

Decentralized water treatment technologies could help in addressing global key water issues. Their successful implementation, however, depends on users’ positive valuation and, depending on the technology, ‘passive’ use (rooted in acceptance), ‘engaged’ use (rooted in support) or ‘active’ use (rooted in behaviour change). Although users’ valuation of a technology is contingent on its characteristics, positive valuation and use usually also require supporting promotion activities. Here we review the literature on psychological determinants of use as well as change techniques to promote use, and propose a user-focused theory of change to guide promotions. Our review highlights a lack of (conclusive) evidence on both psychological determinants and effective change techniques. We call on environmental and health psychologists to intensify their research on ‘passive’, ‘engaged’ and ‘active’ use of decentralized water treatment technologies and encourage engineers, practitioners and psychologists to intensify collaboration to ensure that technologies, implementation and promotions are optimally integrated.

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Fig. 1: The RANAS model.
Fig. 2: Theory of change.

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Acknowledgements

J.K. was supported by Eawag Discretionary Funds for Research for the project ‘Mandatory adoption of decentralized water and sanitation systems: the role of perceived distributive fairness for public acceptability’. We thank E. Reynaert, B. Kollmann and S. Hoffmann for their feedback on this manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Environmental Health Psychology Group, Department of Environmental Social Sciences, Eawag: Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology, Duebendorf, Switzerland

    Nadja Contzen & Josianne Kollmann

  2. Environmental Psychology Group, Department of Psychology, Faculty of Behavioural and Social Sciences, University of Groningen, Groningen, The Netherlands

    Nadja Contzen

  3. RanasMosler, Zurich, Switzerland

    Hans-Joachim Mosler

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  1. Nadja Contzen
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  3. Hans-Joachim Mosler
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Authors are ordered according to their contributions. N.C. led the conception and the writing of the manuscript. J.K. contributed to the conception and to all parts of the manuscript, and led the writing of the sub-sections on decentralized reuse technologies. H.J.M. contributed to the conception and the writing of the sub-sections on purification technologies and provided feedback to all parts.

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Correspondence to Nadja Contzen.

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Contzen, N., Kollmann, J. & Mosler, HJ. The importance of user acceptance, support, and behaviour change for the implementation of decentralized water technologies. Nat Water 1, 138–150 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44221-022-00015-y

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