Mohammad Abu Bakar

• Effective communications for water resilient communities

• Sedimentology
• Car-dependency
• Air quality
• Water resources

• BSc in Geology – University of Leeds and Universiti Brunei Darussalam
• MSc in Transport Planning and the Environment – University of Leeds

The typical water consumer has low engagement with water, sewerage, and related environmental services. This matters, because the water resource context is changing. There are forecast water deficits in some areas and at the same time an increased risk of flooding due to changing weather patterns.

To offset this, and support water resilient communities, people are being asked to use less water, but tend to have low understanding of the issues behind this. While there is low engagement with services, analysis of user generated content on platforms such as Instagram shows that people can have a strong emotional connection with the water environment.

For example, people will post images or references to quality times spent in the outdoors enjoying rivers, lakes and bathing waters. This shows that water in the environment is for many, linked to a range of positive experiences and emotions. The study of emotions and how they drive behaviour is established in the fields of psychology, behavioural sciences, and marketing.

In terms of brands and marketing, communications have been found to have a greater impact if they make an emotional connection as emotions are known to power decision making. However, the role of emotions does not appear to have been tested in terms of communications in the water sector, to see if this could enhance awareness and engagement with water and sewerage services, and better inform water resilient communities.

The research gap is to identify whether, in the water sector context, communications which seek to establish an emotional connection are effective in terms of increasing engagement and raising awareness which can lead to behaviour change.

• Wenyan Wu (Director of Studies)
• Eirini Mavritsaki