"Consumer Confidence Reports" for Drinking Water Contamination: Initial Studies on Public Response. B. B. Johnson, DSR, NJ Dept. of Env. Protection, CN409, Trenton, NJ 08625 (e-mail: bjohnson@dep.state.nj.us)
The 1996 amendments to the Safe Drinking Water Act mandated that utilities must inform their customers once a year of the contaminants (and their levels) in their water, and quarterly if these levels exceed public health standards. Bottled water also contains many contaminants and also usually below standards, but poorly-designed messages might provoke panic switching to bottled from tap water, given some consumers’ apparent aversion to "chemicals." This switch might even violate consumers’ own desired tradeoffs between health and cost considerations if they were fully informed. USEPA, in consultation with utilities and others, is deciding how to implement this mandate. The American Water Works Association is sponsoring focus groups to test potential content and format of these Consumer Confidence Reports with utility consumers, to identify messages that would be informative and evoke "appropriate" concern. This paper reports briefly on these efforts, as well as on a New Jersey experimental study of alternative contents’ and formats’ impact on consumer knowledge, attitudes and behavioral intentions.