Trust in Government and Bottled Water Usage: Consumption as Political Behavior

• In Event: Influence of Public Trust on Environmental Policy

Abstract

As of 2017, bottled water was the number one beverage product in the United States, with 13.7 billion gallons sold, equivalent to 42 gallons per capita. Bottled water’s place as the top beverage product in the United States is the result of a startling rise in sales, with the single use bottled water market not even emerging until the 1980s. What explains this incredible rise in popularity? Research to this point has shown that individuals choose bottled water because of its perceived safety, its (non-existent) taste, and its convenience. In this paper, however, I argue that bottled water consumption can be explained not just by taste, safety, and convenience, but by exploring the politics of trust as well.

In his book, Shopping Our Way to Safety, Andrew Szasz argues that in response to environmental hazards, individuals no longer seek policy solutions that aim to collectively solve issues, but rather turn to commercial products in order to protect themselves individually. This turn away from government solutions and towards individual product based solutions like bottled water, what Szasz calls “inverted quarantine,” has coincided with an extreme drop in trust in the government nationwide, with trust in Washington bottoming out a 18% in 2017. I argue that these phenomena are not unrelated. I suggest that individuals with lower levels of trust in government are more likely to turn towards private consumer goods in order to protect themselves from environmental harm, due to their belief that the solution will not come from government. I argue that this may explain individual bottled water consumption, since local governments supply tap water.

In order to explore this possibility, I use original data from a module of the 2018 Cooperative Congressional Election Survey. The survey asks individuals about their use of bottled water as their primary drinking water source, as well as their level of trust in federal, state, and local government. I expect that bottled water consumption will be more likely among those with low levels of trust in government.

Author

• David Switzer, University of Missouri