Turning the tap or buying the bottle? Consumers’ personality, understanding of risk, trust and conspicuous consumption of drinking water in Norway

Abstract

This paper contributes to the debate on sustainable water consumption by exploring the relation between consumers’ personality, understanding of risk/trust and social distinction in water drinking practices in Norway. Our main research question, how can we understand preferences for water consumption?, is approached by answering a set of hypotheses inspired by a combination of three theoretical approaches. Latent variables measuring personality and conspicuous attitudes are included in frequency models based on the statistical beta distribution together with other predictors. Statistical tests were performed to find the connection between expected frequency of water consumption, personality, risk/trust and conspicuous attitudes. The conclusion is that the consequence of the connections between consumers’ personality, understanding of risk and conspicuous consumption of water should be considered by Norwegian stakeholders when planning future strategies and methods for more sustainable water consumption.