Public perception towards river and water conservation practices: Opportunities for implementing urban stormwater management practices

Public perception vs ecological quality status: Examining the ecological restoration of the Congost River's Environment

This study examines the public's perceptions of the ecological restoration of the Congost River over the past thirty years, focusing on the period between 2010 and 2022. We conducted a survey of 112 river users across five key zones identified through a pilot study for their high pedestrian density, aiming to analyse how different sociodemographic groups perceive the river's ecological state. A structured questionnaire was distributed along both sides of the river to engage a diverse range of individuals typically utilizing the river environment. The collected data were analysed using regression models and Mann-Whitney U tests to assess differences between groups, with Bonferroni adjustments applied to control for multiple comparisons. The results reveal a broad increase in appreciation for the river since 2010, alongside measurable ecological improvements supported by scientific data. Despite these positive changes, a majority of surveyed users remain sceptical about the river's recovery, with less pronounced scepticism among older respondents, those with higher education, and environmental volunteers. These groups' perceptions align more closely with empirical evidence, highlighting the influence of sociodemographic factors on environmental awareness. Individuals living closer to natural settings and frequent river visitors were found to be more attuned to changes in the river's environment, particularly in aesthetic and sensory aspects. The study underscores the persistence of a perceptual gap between scientific assessments of ecological health and public sentiment, emphasizing the complex relationship between community perceptions and objective environmental indicators. These insights underline the complex relationship between community perceptions and objective environmental indicators, reflecting a broader trend in environmental awareness and the importance of factual communication in ecological issues.

Protecting and restoring freshwater biodiversity across urban areas in Aotearoa New Zealand: Citizens' reporting of pollution in stormwater drains and waterways

Urbanization poses numerous challenges to freshwater biodiversity. This paper describes two studies with the joint aim of demonstrating the benefits of applying a systematic behaviour change framework and providing the foundational knowledge to inform future behavior change work to protect and restore urban freshwater biodiversity. In Study 1 we used a mixed-methods research design, involving 14 key informant interviews followed by an online survey targeting 17 freshwater biodiversity experts and another targeting a representative sample of 550 urban residents, to identify and prioritize the most promising resident behaviors to target to reduce stormwater pollution and improve natural waterway habitats in urban areas. Study 2 focused on the top-ranked short-term behavior identified in Study 1, citizen reporting of pollution in stormwater drains and waterways. We surveyed a representative sample of 1901 urban residents across Aoteraoa New Zealand to identify four main determinants influencing this behavior: awareness and uncertainty about reporting, lack of opportunity to report, social motivation and personal motivation to report, and five potential target audiences: 'Supportive', 'Unaware but receptive', 'Motivated but lack support', 'Reluctant', and 'Not my problem'. We make recommendations for the most appropriate intervention designs to target each of these audience segments to promote the reporting of stormwater pollution in urban areas. This knowledge will allow for a more coordinated and effective approach for addressing the 'human element' that lies at the heart of many urban freshwater management problems.

Community values on governing urban water nature-based solutions in Sydney, Australia

Since the needs and expectations of communities towards their urban environments often vary, landscape management strategies can often be prone to fail in the absence of social considerations. It is therefore incumbent on policy-makers to investigate and attempt to reconcile diverse community perceptions toward the natural and built environment for more equitable governance. This is of particular interest when planning and managing nature-based solutions (NBS) for river protection. We considered this challenge in understanding human values, perceptions and behaviour in a multilayered ecosystem that includes waterways, NBS, green open spaces, and a built environment. This paper analyses perceptions and behaviour around a public urban park next to the Georges River in Sydney Australia, utilizing a proxy-based approach and a mixed-method comprising community surveys and behavioural mapping. The results showed that while users perceive the significance of the urban river environment differently, naturalistic (ecological), humanistic (recreational) and utilitarian (well-being) values are dominant. Urban river catchments are highly valued for recreational purposes, with a strong perception of potential flooding hazards. Through exploring the literature, we recognized that the dominancy of leisure-related values around urban river catchments can be generalized to similar cases worldwide. While NBS, as an urban stormwater management solution, address some user values (e.g., naturalistic) around urban river catchments, they may lack further delivery of humanistic and utilitarian values due to the poor integration with recreational and cultural spaces. It was also the case around the Georges River, where low prominence of cultural features was observed. We concluded that NBS development around Georges River and other urban river catchments should incorporate socio-cultural considerations and community values, in particular the ones related to leisure. The gaps between users' beliefs and behaviour do not greatly challenge governance, provided that the decision-makers utilise these gaps for optimising management actions.

Community experiences of landscape-based stormwater management practices: A review

Urban stormwater management increasingly changes urban landscapes. From rain gardens to stormwater ponds, landscape-based practices are visible and often accessible to community members, whose support and experience of these practices will affect their success. This critical narrative review addresses these Landscape-based Stormwater Management Practices (L-SWMPs). It assesses quantitative and qualitative evidence for the effects of characteristics of individual community members, L-SWMP landscape context, and L-SWMPs themselves on community members' perceptions, attitudes, and societal outcomes. Characteristics of community members are most well-studied. Environmental knowledge and past experiences of community members have strong, consistent effects, while the effects of demographic characteristics are weaker and inconsistent. Landscape characteristics, especially greenspace context and neighborhood landscape norms, consistently influence perceptions of L-SWMPs as amenities. Effects of noticeable L-SWMP characteristics are understudied; we argue that paying greater attention to these characteristics may help practitioners innovate L-SWMPs that benefit communities and receive their support.

Scientific Evidence behind the Ecosystem Services Provided by Sustainable Urban Drainage Systems

Urban green infrastructure such as sustainable urban drainage systems are potential providers of ecosystem services. This paper reviews the field studies that empirically verify the potential benefits of SUDS. The cultural, provisioning, supporting, and regulating ecosystem services investigated in real cases have been studied and classified according to climatology (except for the control of urban hydrology, which has been widely corroborated). Although successful cases of runoff decontamination are numerous, there is heterogeneity in the results of the systems beyond those associated with climatic differences. The other ecosystem services have not been as widely studied, giving very variable and even negative results in some cases such as climate change control (in some instances, these techniques can emit greenhouse gases). Installations in temperate climates are, by far, the most studied. These services derive from the biological processes developed in green infrastructure and they depend on climate, so it would be advisable to carry out specific studies that could serve as the basis for a design that optimizes potential ecosystem services, avoiding possible disservices.

Ecosystem Benefits Provision of Green Stormwater Infrastructure in Chinese Sponge Cities

The Sponge City Development (SCD) concept was initiated in 2012 to address severe urban flooding and water quality challenges in China. Green stormwater infrastructure (GSI) such as rain gardens have been adopted as critical stormwater management tools. Existing GSI research has focused primarily on their environmental performance, overlooking the human dimensions. The co-benefits of GSI have been particularly underinvestigated. We used social surveys (n = 607) and expert interviews (n = 11) to explore public perception of SCD and GSI in four pilot sponge cities, examining flood experience, stormwater concerns, GSI familiarity, institutional trust, and GSI benefit perception. The survey found high exposure to flooding, medium GSI familiarity, and strong institutional trust. The public showed greater concern on stormwater impacts on their quality-of-life than the water environment, rating the less-intended aesthetic and health values as the best-perceived benefits. Experience, familiarity, concern, trust, age, and city significantly affected GSI benefit perception. In contrast, the experts spoke more positively about the environmental benefits while indicating the inadequacy of public participation. The case of GSI in SCD offers broad implications for environmental governance and expert-public relationships in an era of rapid social, technological, and environmental change. Refining policies and regulations to incorporate social goals, bringing the public into the SCD process, and building up the GSI industry's capacity in planning, design, construction, and maintenance are critical to enhancing GSI benefits provision. Adopting the co-benefits approach will be essential to utilizing GSI as a place-making tool to create more sustainable and livable communities.

The Role of Attitudes, Social Norms, and Perceived Behavioral Control as Factors Influencing Urban and Suburban Residential Adoption of Stormwater Best Management Practices

Nonpoint source pollution conveyed by stormwater in urban areas poses a significant threat to quality of waterbodies in the US. In the absence of systematic regulations on household stormwater management, municipalities rely largely on educational programs to encourage voluntary adoption of lawncare best management practices (BMPs) by residents who slow down and temporarily capture excess stormwater and filter out pollutants entering waterways. The current literature on factors influencing urban dwellers' adoption of lawncare BMPs mostly focuses on demographics, barriers to adoption, and effectiveness of education and outreach programs. This study applies the reasoned action approach (RAA) behavioral theory to investigate how the combination of individuals' attitudes, social norms, and perceived behavioral control may affect their decision to adopt three lawncare BMPs, including mulching and fertilizer/pesticide avoidance, and support a municipal ban on lawncare chemicals. We use survey data (n = 235) from residents in two neighboring cities in central Maine, USA. We found that perceived behavioral control predicted fertilizer/pesticide avoidance and mulching, and that beliefs and attitudes toward the outcomes of adopting lawncare BMPS were positively associated with mulching and support for a municipal ban on lawncare chemicals. We observed statistically significant but inconsistent associations between several independent variables-including descriptive and injunctive social norms, gender, level of education, age, and home ownership status-and our dependent variables of interest. The findings provide insights into an underexplored set of factors and confirmatory evidence for previously tested factors influencing urban residents' BMP adoption, and suggest new strategies and communication frames for environmental managers and researchers.

Developing the implicit association test to uncover hidden preferences for sustainable drainage systems

Understanding public perceptions of Sustainable Drainage Systems (SuDS) is critical for addressing barriers to their implementation. Perceptions are typically evaluated using explicit measures (e.g. questionnaires) that are subject to biases and may not fully capture attitudes towards SuDS. A novel image-based application of the Implicit Association Test is developed to investigate unconscious perceptions of SuDS in public greenspace and combined with explicit tests to evaluate perceptions of greenspace with and without SuDS, focusing on a sample population in Newcastle-upon-Tyne. Greenspace with or without SuDS is perceived positively by the sample population. Overall, respondents implicitly and explicitly prefer greenspace without SuDS and perceive greenspace without SuDS as more attractive, tidier and safer. The wide distribution of scores for SuDS, nonetheless, suggests a range of opinions and illustrates the complex nature of preferences for the use of greenspace. That the strongly negative explicit scores were not reflected in the implicit tests may suggest that explicit attitudes towards tidiness and safety may not be deep-rooted and are subject to social bias. Combined explicit and implicit tests may help us to understand any disconnect between expressed positive attitudes to natural spaces and behaviours around them and inform SuDS design to increase public acceptance. This article is part of the theme issue 'Urban flood resilience'.

Urban stormwater characterization, control, and treatment

This review summarizes over 250 studies published in 2018 related to the characterization, control, and management of urban stormwater runoff. The review covers three broad themes: (a) quantity and quality characterization of stormwater, (b) control and treatment of stormwater runoff, and (c) implementation and assessment of watershed-scale green stormwater infrastructure (GSI). Each section provides an overview of the 2018 literature, common themes, and future work. Several themes emerged from the 2018 literature including exploration of contaminants of emerging concern within stormwater systems, characterization and incorporation of vegetation-driven dynamics in stormwater control measures, and the need for interdisciplinary perspectives on the implementation and assessment of GSI. PRACTITIONER POINTS: Over 250 studies were published in 2018 related to the characterization, control, and treatment of stormwater. Studies cover general stormwater characteristics, control and treatment systems, and watershed-scale assessments. Trends in 2018 include treatment trains, vegetation dynamics, and interdisciplinary perspectives.