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Bringing the “social” into sociohydrology: Conservation policy support in the C entral G reat P lains of K ansas, USA
Author(s) -
Sanderson Matthew R.,
Bergtold Jason S.,
Heier Stamm Jessica L.,
Caldas Marcellus M.,
Ramsey Steven M.
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
water resources research
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.863
H-Index - 217
eISSN - 1944-7973
pISSN - 0043-1397
DOI - 10.1002/2017wr020659
Subject(s) - obligation , agriculture , business , ecosystem services , marketing , environmental economics , ecosystem , economics , political science , geography , ecology , law , biology , archaeology
Identifying means of empirically modeling the human component of a coupled, human‐water system becomes critically important to further advances in sociohydrology. We develop a social‐psychological model of environmental decision making that addresses four key challenges of incorporating social science into integrated models. We use the model to explain preferences for three conservation policies designed to conserve and protect water resources and aquatic ecosystems in the Smoky Hill River Basin, a semiarid agricultural region in the Central U.S. Great Plains. Further, we compare the model's capacity to explain policy preferences among members of two groups in the River Basin: agricultural producers and members of nonfarming communities. We find that financial obligation is the strongest and most consistent explanation of support for conservation policies among members of both groups. We also find that policy support is grounded in cultural values—deeply held ideas about right and wrong. Environmental values are particularly important explanations of policy support. The constellations of values invoked to make decisions about policies, and the social‐psychological pathways linking values to policy support, can vary across policies and types of agents (farmers and nonfarmers). We discuss the implications of the results for future research in sociohydrology.