Description
As the world looks to alternative water sources in the face of climate change and worsening drought, public perception plays a key role in the acceptance or rejection of proposed solutions and emerging technologies. In the case of recycled drinking water, where wastewater is recaptured and then treated to levels deemed acceptable for drinking and potable reuse, a resistant discourse stemming from a reaction defined as the yuck factor has been instrumental in overturning recycled initiatives, even in areas of extreme shortage and need. In scenarios where recycled initiatives are ultimately accepted, however, mindfully-constructed outreach and communication efforts are shown to be instrumental in defusing the yuck factor to build a discourse of acceptance. I begin by examining the Discourse of Resistance and role of the yuck factor, asking whether it can or should be discounted. Here, I perform two rhetorical analyses of scenarios where recycled water initiatives were rejected, asking why the persuasive efforts of these initiatives failed. I then turn my discussion to the Discourse of Acceptance, building from an existing social-psychological model of public perception comprised of trust, risk, and acceptance to identify how the persuasive elements of ethos (ethics), logos (logic), and pathos (emotion) work in the systematic acceptance of recycled water. I perform a third analysis on a successful recycled initiative to identify why this persuasive effort worked, and then look further at the role of emotional response (and how researchers use it to define public perception). In a fourth analysis, I look at a method of qualitative study known as the Lived Experiences Method and the evolved emotional response stemming from a lived experience rather than a proposed scenario. I conclude that proper communication and outreach surrounding sound science is key to building trust in an appeal to ethics; that the proper identification and analysis of risk is key to reaching acceptance in an appeal to logic; and that the emotional response gauged at the introduction of a recycled initiative should be considered very differently from that of the whole of public perception, especially as emotional response evolves with lived experience over time.
