Research on the Phenomenon of Chinese Residents’ Spiritual Contagion for the Reuse of Recycled Water Based on SC-IAT

Abstract

Recycled water has been widely recognized in the world as an effective approach to relieve the issue of water shortage. Meanwhile, with several decades of development, the insufficiency of technology is no longer the primary factor that restricts the popularization of recycled water. What makes it difficult to promote the concept of reusing recycled water in China? To solve this issue, a special experiment on the public's attitude towards the reuse of recycled water was designed based on a Single Category Implicit Association Test (SC-IAT), so as to avoid factors like social preference that can influence the survey results, and to gain the public's negative implicit attitude towards reusing recycled water reuse, which is close to the public's real attitude to it. From the perspective of implicit attitude, this research testifies the "spiritual contagion" phenomenon of the public, which refers to refusing recycled water reuse because recycled water is made from sewage treatment. By comparing the implicit attitude to recycled water reuse with the explicit attitude that is acquired from self-reporting questionnaires about reusing recycled water, this research finds that the implicit attitude is more positive than the explicit attitude, which accounts for the phenomenon of "best game no one played" in the promotion of the recycled water reuse, that is, the public though applauding the environment-friendly policy, will not actually use the recycled water.

Implicit and Explicit Biases for Recycled Water and Tap Water

“…This study provides insight into negative attitudes consumers have regarding agricultural products irrigated with recycled water and replacing bottled water with tap water. Like Fu and Liu (2017), we find that respondents had a negative implicit attitude toward recycled water, and we find that consumers have a negative explicit attitude. Respondents also had a negative implicit attitude toward tap water.…”

Social Class Priming Effect on Prosociality: Evidence from Explicit and Implicit Measures

“…In previous studies on social class effect on prosociality, implicit and explicit measures were always isolated, and few studies combined the two methods [ 34 , 42 , 43 ]. We conducted an implicit experiment and an explicit experiment to test whether lower social class tended to be more prosocial.…”

Applying Meta-Frontier Approaches to Profitability Estimation: In Case of the Effects of Official Independent Directors

“…e violation of the former is signi cantly higher than the latter. e author believed that the relevant provisions of the central organization department were conducive to the maintenance and development of the market order [6][7][8].…”