Saving for a dry day: investigating well ownership and watering practices during droughts

ABSTRACT

Growing demands for irrigation water are tapping groundwater supplies beyond their natural rates of replenishment, which has profound implications for sustaining communities in semiarid regions. This paper investigates the drought-time watering practices of Kansas well owners, a key social group whose water consumption is pivotal to prolonging groundwater formations. I address two questions: Do well owners and non-well owners have different responses to droughts? Is the relationship between water supply awareness and water conservation during droughts moderated by water supply infrastructure? To answer these questions, I constructed one of the only datasets of well owners used in the social sciences by surveying well owners and non-well owners throughout Kansas (n = 864). My findings reveal that well ownership is significantly correlated to increased watering during droughts and water conservation varies among those who own different types of wells. Furthermore, increased levels of water literacy are negatively associated with water conservation during droughts. These findings support the Conservation of Resources theory, which holds that individuals stockpile their resources during non-stressful times and draw from their reserves during times of scarcity. Therefore, aquifer stewardship involves selective timing for making groundwater extractions.

KEYWORDS:

• Sociology of water usage
• well owners
• groundwater
• drought
• water supply infrastructure

Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank Paul Stock, Bob Antonio, David Smith, Ebenezer Obadare, and Terry Loecke at the University of Kansas, Todd Little at Texas Tech University, Stewart Lockie at James Cook University, and the anonymous reviewers and editorial staff for their feedback on this manuscript. I also thank my research assistants, Valerie Peterson, Cassie Butts, Sofiia Filatova, Yulduz Kuchkarova, Liz Blackburn, Halle McCourt, Katelyn Whitt, Chelsea Martell, and Murphy Maiden.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Details about my modeling decisions and the fit indices are available upon request.

2. The complete results of the factor loadings, residual variance parameters, and standard errors of the indicators (factor loadings) are available upon request.

Additional information

Funding

This research was partially supported by the University of Kansas under the Doctoral Student Research Grant and the Institute for Policy & Social Research at the University of Kansas under the Doctoral Research Fellows Grant.

Notes on contributors

Brock Ternes

Brock Ternes (Ph.D., University of Kansas, 2016) is a visiting assistant professor in the Sociology/Anthropology Department at SUNY Cortland. His research and teaching interests include environmental sociology, environmental policy, the sociology of water usage, globalization, migration, quantitative methods, and survey research. He can be reached via e-mail at [email protected] or via mail at P.O. Box 2000, Moffett Center, Room 2107, Cortland, NY 13045.