A matter of influence: getting over the 'ick' with recycled water

While purified recycled water has been well accepted and even celebrated in Singapore for decades, public acceptance of recycled drinking water is still low in Australia and other countries.

Many in Australia will remember the public rejection of recycled water by Toowoomba residents in Queensland back in 2006 during the millennium drought, which led to a referendum where they voted in favour of desalination.

Since then, public acceptance of recycled drinking water has been slowly improving, with Western Australia now leading the way in Australia. Purified recycled drinking water was introduced in Perth in 2017 out of necessity as the city has limited dams and the water resources were dwindling.

With growing concern over climate change, supplying water to other large cities across the country is also becoming an increasing challenge. Many of the state’s water utilities have boosted their efforts to try and educate the public with data and facilities that demonstrate the benefits and safety of purified drinking water, but the ‘ick-factor’ still remains ever present.

Now, an international study led by the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC) in Spain has identified a method that could prove key to overcoming consumers’ instinctive resistance to recycled drinking water — using sensory content on social media rather than rational data.

Research led by Professor Inma Rodríguez-Ardura, coordinator of the UOC's Digital Business Research Group (DigiBiz), found that influencers on platforms such as Instagram use sensory and emotional content to build mental images, and that this is more effective than purely rational arguments for overcoming resistance to drinking recycled tap water and encouraging sustainable consumption.

The study, published in the British Food Journal, is based on the experience of 800 Instagram users from Barcelona and Phoenix. The authors also include Professor Antoni Meseguer-Artola and Gisela Ammetller, fellow members of the UOC’s Faculty of Economics and Business.

The research team understood that, while there is a real and urgent need to encourage the consumption of recycled tap water in areas threatened by the climate emergency, the main obstacle to uptake is not its safety, but how it is perceived. Although recycled tap water is safe for human consumption if it has gone through appropriate water treatment systems, when people know that the source is treated and purified waste water, for many their instinctive reactions include rejection, fear and even revulsion. This visceral reaction is compounded by a widespread tendency among consumers to undervalue the supply of tap water, or take it for granted until a supply crisis occurs.

In this context, traditional communication strategies, based predominantly on technical data, scientific presentations and rational arguments about collective savings, are demonstrably insufficient for changing deeply ingrained habits. “Although sustainable water consumption objectively benefits society as a whole in the long term, just communicating this idea is not enough to get consumers’ full engagement,” Rodríguez-Ardura said. This is where influencer marketing comes in. According to the research, this tool helps make abstract benefits like sustainability more tangible, linking them to positive emotions and feelings, aspects that public institutions and supply companies have failed to exploit to date.

The power of mental imagery

The study centres on the concept of mental imagery and how social media, specifically Instagram, can be used to evoke it. The researchers set out to determine how the content created by influencers can generate subjective, transformative and compelling experiences for their followers. Rodríguez-Ardura, who is affiliated to the UOC-DIGIT research centre, explained the importance of this psychological mechanism: “Mental imagery is a subjective experience that involves conjuring up vivid feelings, objects, people or events, even if they did not happen or are not real. It’s a type of feeling we create in our minds that makes things that were perceived as abstract, complex or distant seem tangible, understandable and real.”

The research identifies two dimensions within this phenomenon: elaborated imagery, which the consumer creates voluntarily through cognitive effort (such as calculating how much plastic is saved by drinking tap water), and spontaneous imagery, which arises effortlessly or unconsciously, prompted by a stimulus. For example, a video of an influencer drinking recycled tap water out in the sunshine might automatically evoke mental images of it being refreshing and thirst-quenching, without the need for complex rational processing.

One of the key findings of the study, conducted on a sample of 800 Instagram users between the ages of 18 and 54, is the asymmetric impact of different types of message. Although being informative is important for the formation of mental images, hedonic or sensorial content has a significantly greater impact. “To break down the barriers to sustainable water consumption, it’s not enough to get people to understand that tap water is healthy and safe. It’s also vital to recreate the experience of drinking it as something desirable, refreshing and emotionally satisfying,” Rodríguez-Ardura said.

The study also explores the concept of ‘transportation’, a psychological state of deep immersion in a narrative. The data reveals that mental imagery acts as a powerful antecedent or trigger for this phenomenon, leading the consumer to become so absorbed in the influencer’s story that they lose track of time and feel part of the scene before them on the screen. Facilitating this vicarious experience reduces the capacity for critical thinking and opposition to the message. It fosters an enduring emotional connection that is key to transforming attitudes on sensitive issues, allowing us to experience the benefits of recycled tap water and its sustainable use before we actually taste it.

Implications for future campaigns

The study’s conclusions offer a roadmap for public institutions and bodies responsible for water management. It suggests that campaigns should not be limited to providing information, but should strive as much, if not more, to have hedonic and sensory appeal. If an authority wants to encourage the use of recycled tap water, its strategy should focus on helping the public to visualise and feel its positive properties.

“A public institution that promotes the use of recycled tap water in the urban supply system must focus its strategy on helping consumers to vicariously ‘visualise’ and ‘feel’ the positive properties of the water. This can be achieved, for example, through influencer marketing initiatives focusing on conveying the sensation of drinking, the freshness of the water, or doing healthy activities where drinking water is an emotionally desirable experience,” Rodríguez-Ardura said.

The researchers also believe this communicative approach can be applied to other areas beyond water — such as encouraging people to vaccinate or recycle, or even to combat climate change.

Image credit: iStock.com/courtneyk