Drinking water catchment protection as disaster risk reduction: modelling community support for restrictive recreation policy using the Health Belief Model

While natural and anthropogenic hazards are increasing, Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) can protect individuals and communities from the adverse effects of disasters associated with those hazards. DRR can be achieved through implementing policies to reduce or remove hazards; such policies, however, are often restrictive and, therefore, contravene personal desires and freedoms. As policies need to be accepted and followed by the community to be effective, it is important to understand the variables influencing community acceptance of those policies. A literature review revealed there was no accepted model of policy support, but that risk perception was likely to be a key influencing factor. A candidate model — the Health Belief Model (HBM) — was identified in the health behaviour field, and tested in the novel context of policy support for its ability to explain support for policies restricting recreational activities in drinking water catchments, which are implemented by metropolitan water managers in Australia to reduce contamination risks to potable water sources. Through Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modelling, the HBM was found to have good explanatory power for recreation policy support in a sample of the adult population of the lower Hunter Region of New South Wales. Modelling and subsequent analyses determined that risk perception was a key driver of policy support in the sample, and that other important influencing variables in this context included gender and self-interest, particularly in the form of proximity of residence to catchments and personal recreation preferences. The influence of self-interest has important implications for community engagement activities. The HBM can identify factors to which information and education campaigns can be targeted in order to increase community acceptance of risk reduction policies, and has potential application as a general model of risk reduction policy support, particularly in the health and disaster domains. Use of the HBM may assist in the mitigation of disaster risk by helping to increase community acceptance of disaster risk reduction policies.