Detecting community response to water quality violations using bottled water sales

Abstract

Drinking-water contaminants pose a risk to public health. When confronted with elevated levels of contaminants, individuals can take actions to reduce exposure. Yet, few studies address averting behavior due to impaired water, particularly in high-income countries. This is a problem of national interest, given that 9 million to 45 million people have been affected by water quality violations in each of the past 34 years. No national analysis has focused on the extent to which communities reduce exposure to contaminated drinking water. Here, we present an assessment that sheds light on how communities across the United States respond to violations of the Safe Drinking Water Act, using consumer purchases of bottled water. This study provides insight into how averting behavior differs across violation types and community demographics. We estimate the change in sales due to water quality violations, using a panel dataset of weekly sales and violation records in 2,151 counties from 2006 to 2015. Critical findings show that violations which pose an immediate health risk are associated with a 14% increase in bottled water sales. Generally, greater averting action is taken against contaminants that might pose a greater perceived health risk and that require more immediate public notification. Rural, low-income communities do not take significant averting action for elevated levels of nitrate, yet experience a higher prevalence of nitrate violations. Findings can inform improvements in public notification and targeting of technical assistance from state regulators and public health agencies in order to reduce community exposure to contaminants.

Beverage bottle capacity, packaging efficiency, and the potential for plastic waste reduction

“…First, we obtained the PET tonnage collected for recycling in each Minnesota county for 2009 to 2013. Second, we procured county-level data on sales of beverage bottled in PET from The Nielsen Company (US), LLC (a company that collects and maintains retailing data from the grocery, convenience, drugstore, and mass merchandising channels 20 ). Lastly, we gathered data from the U.S. Census Bureau for use as controls.…”

In‐Home Tap Water Consumption Trends Changed Among U.S. Children, but Not Adults, Between 2007 and 2016

“…Reports or news of water quality violations likely change people's perceptions of tap water safety and, resultingly, their avoidance behaviors (Jackson, 2017). Previous research has demonstrated that in counties reporting water quality violations, bottled water sales (a proxy of tap water avoidance) increased by 2.3% after the first Tier 1 violation, but that in counties with repeat violations, these same effects were not present (Allaire et al, 2019). News coverage dedicated to the Flint water crisis may have affected the decisions of parents elsewhere about the safety of their own tap water through the “availability heuristic” (Tversky & Kahneman, 1974).…”

“…These findings help unpack disparities of in-home tap water use, building upon analyses in which observations are aggregated across time or studies which used bottled water sales as a proxy of tap water avoidance (Allaire et al, 2019;Christensen et al, 2019;Patel et al, 2013;Rosinger et al, 2018;Zivin et al, 2011). Examining time trends allows for an evaluation of changes across critical demographic covariates in respect to large-scale events and magnitude of changes.…”

“…While previous analyses have examined disparities in tap water avoidance and perceptions of drinking water safety, they have done so at single time points (Javidi & Pierce, 2018;Park et al, 2019;Pierce & Gonzalez, 2017) or by aggregating data from multiple years into a single model (Patel et al, 2013). Other studies have measured tap water avoidance more indirectly over time, for example, by examining trends in bottled water expenditures in response to water quality violations (Allaire et al, 2019;Zivin et al, 2011) or in response to the Flint water crisis (Christensen et al, 2019). However, trends in the prevalence of whether people are using the tap water in their homes over time have not been examined empirically in nationally representative data.…”

The Regressive Costs of Drinking Water Contaminant Avoidance

“…For example, during the highprofile violation of water quality standards in Flint, Michigan, when the maximum contaminant level for trihalomethanes was exceeded in December 2014, return to compliance was not achieved until 9 months later. 2 As customers wait for the supplier to fix the problem, either voluntarily or following legal action by the state or federal government, many purchase bottled water or filtration devices in order to avoid contaminants (Allaire et al 2019, Zivin et al 2011. Expenditure on avoidance methods has been used in the environmental economics literature to estimate the willingness to pay (WTP) for water quality improvements (Brouwer et al 2015, Brox et al 2003, Johnston and Thomassin 2010, Rodriguez-Tapia et al 2017 and similarly for air quality improvements (Freeman et al 2019).…”