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How do people make a decision on bottled or tap water? Preference elicitation with nonparametric bootstrap simulations
Author(s) -
GüngörDemirci Gamze,
Lee Juneseok,
Mirzaei Majid,
Younos Tamim
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
water and environment journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.437
H-Index - 37
eISSN - 1747-6593
pISSN - 1747-6585
DOI - 10.1111/wej.12181
Subject(s) - bottled water , tap water , pairwise comparison , nonparametric statistics , preference , marketing , psychology , computer science , business , engineering , statistics , economics , econometrics , mathematics , environmental engineering , artificial intelligence
Abstract People in the United States drink almost four times the amount of bottled water than they did 20 years ago, even though tap water supplies in the United States are considered to be among the safest in the world. To understand ‘how do people make a decision on tap or bottled water’, a consumer preferences survey was administered to the Civil and Environmental Engineering students attending a US university. The survey elicited information on participants’ preferences and real life attitude/preferences and included a multi‐criteria pairwise comparison. The pairwise comparison preferences were further analysed by integrating nonparametric bootstrap simulations to determine the underlying uncertainty. The results revealed that although safety issues were deemed most important, participants were also subconsciously aware of other crucial issues related to drinking water. These findings provide useful information for drinking water policy experts and water utilities about consumer perceptions of the relative virtues of tap and bottled water.