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In dealing with water pollution and freshwater scarcity, on-site treatment and reuse of domestic wastewater has shown to be a promising solution. To increase on-site wastewater treatment and reuse, some cities, among them Bengaluru in India, have mandated the installation and use of the necessary technology in certain building types. However, even with a mandate, a successful and sustainable implementation of the technology, including reliable operation, monitoring, and maintenance, depends on the acceptance (i.e. positive valuation) of the technology and its use by the (prospective) users. Literature on technology acceptance indicates perceived costs, risks, and benefits of the respective technology as key predictors of acceptance. Therefore, the present online study assessed this relationship for on-site systems in Bengaluru. The relation was analysed separately for mandated users of on-site systems (N = 103) and current non-users (i.e. potential prospective users, should the mandate be expanded; N = 232), as the perceptions might differ between the two groups, due to the personal experience with the technology among users. The results show that for mandated users and non-users, acceptance of on-site systems is explained by perceived benefits only, namely a positive image of users, environmental benefits, and, only for non-users, also financial benefits for the city. The findings suggest that interventions aimed at promoting on-site systems should include emphasis on the benefits of on-site systems. Whenever possible, interventions should be tailored to the target group's individual cost, risk, and benefit perception.

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Public resistance to sustainable innovations is oftentimes accompanied by strong negative emotions. Therefore, it is essential to better understand the underlying factors of emotions toward sustainable innovations to facilitate their successful implementation. Based on the Value-Innovation-Congruence model of Emotional responses (VICE model), we argue that positive and negative emotions toward innovations reflect whether innovations are congruent or incongruent with (i.e., support or threaten) people's core values. We tested our reasoning in two experimental studies (N = 114 and N = 246), by asking participants to evaluate innovations whose characteristics were either congruent or incongruent with egoistic values (study 1) or with biospheric values (study 1 and study 2). In line with the VICE model, we found overall that the more an innovation was perceived to have characteristics congruent with these values, and biospheric values in particular, the stronger positive and the weaker negative emotions they experienced toward the innovation, especially the more strongly people endorsed these values. Emotions, in turn, were related with acceptability of innovations. Our findings highlight that emotions toward innovations can have a systematic basis in people's values that can be addressed to ensure responsible decision-making on sustainable innovations.

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BACKGROUND: Products made from recycled organic materials are an important part of a circular economy, but the question is whether they will be adopted by the public. Such products can elicit strong emotional responses and public resistance. As a case in point, we studied products made from sewage waste, such as recycled toilet paper, which can serve as material alternative to wood and plastic when making household items (e.g., tables). In an experimental study, we investigated the role of values in emotional responses to such wastewater products, and whether emotional responses were influenced by value-tailored messages. We expected that people would experience positive emotions towards products that supported their values, especially when the messages emphasised the benefits of these products for their values (e.g., when the products were presented as good for the environment). We presented participants with one of two messages describing wastewater products as having positive implications for either biospheric values (i.e. positive consequences for the environment) or hedonic values (i.e. positive consequences for personal enjoyment). We predicted that the relationship between values and positive emotions would be stronger when the messages emphasised the positive implications of wastewater products for one's core values. Additionally, we predicted that emotions would be associated with acceptability and intentions to purchase the products. RESULTS: The more strongly people endorsed biospheric values, the more positive emotions they reported towards wastewater products. As expected, this relationship was stronger when the environmental benefits of products were emphasised. Hedonic values were significantly but weakly associated with more negative and more positive emotions, and this did not depend on the message framing. However, we found that emphasising pleasurable benefits of wastewater products reduced positive emotions in people with weaker hedonic values. Positive and negative emotions were significantly associated with higher and lower acceptability of the products and intentions to purchase the products, respectively. CONCLUSIONS: Our findings have implications for the effective marketing of wastewater products. For people with strong biospheric values, emphasising the positive environmental consequences may promote wastewater products. Such biospheric messages do not seem to make the products less (or more) appealing for people with strong hedonic values, who do not generally have strong emotional responses to these products. We discuss the theoretical implications of our findings and avenues for future research.

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Unsafe sanitation practices are a major source of environmental pollution and are a leading cause of death in countries of the Global South. One of the most successful campaigns to eradicate open defecation is "Community-Led Total Sanitation" (CLTS). It aims at shifting social norms towards safe sanitation practices. However, the effectiveness of CLTS is heterogeneous. Based on social identity theory, we expect CLTS to be most effective in communities with stronger social identification, because in these communities individuals should rather follow social norms. We conducted a cluster-randomized controlled trial with 3,216 households in 132 communities in Ghana, comparing CLTS to a control arm. Self-reported open defecation rates and social identification were assessed pre-post. Generalized Estimating Equations showed that CLTS achieved lower open defecation rates compared to controls. This effect was significantly stronger for communities with stronger average social identification. The results confirm the assumptions of social identity theory. They imply that pre-existing social identification needs to be considered for planning CLTS, and strengthened beforehand if needed.

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Handwashing interventions are a priority in development and emergency aid programs. Evaluation of these interventions is essential to assess the effectiveness of programs; however, measuring handwashing is quite difficult. Although observations are considered valid, they are time-consuming and cost-ineffective; self-reports are highly efficient but considered invalid because desirable behaviour tends to be over-reported. Socially desirable responding has been claimed to be the main cause of inflated self-reports, but its underlying factors and mechanisms are understudied. The present study investigated socially desirable responding and additional potential explanatory factors for over-reported handwashing to identify indications for measures which mitigate over-reporting. Additionally, a script-based covert recall, an alternative interview question intended to mitigate recall errors and socially desirable responding, was developed and tested. Cross-sectional data collection was conducted in the Borena Zone, Ethiopia, through 2.5-hour observations and 1-hour interviews with the primary caregivers in households. A total sample of N = 554 was surveyed. Data were analysed with correlation and multiple regression analyses and dependent t-tests. Over-reporting of handwashing was associated with factors assumed to be involved in (1) socially desirable responding, (2) encoding and recall of information, and (3) dissonance processes. The latter two factor groups explained over-reported handwashing beyond socially desirable responding. The alternative interview question--script-based covert recall--reduced over-reporting compared to conventional self-reports. Although the difficulties involved in measuring handwashing by self-reports and observations are widely known, the present study is the first to investigate the factors which explain over-reporting of handwashing. This research contributes to the limited evidence base on a highly important subject: how to evaluate handwashing interventions efficiently and accurately.

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Handwashing with soap effectively prevents diarrhoea, a leading cause of death in infants. Theory-based interventions are expected to promote handwashing more successfully than standard approaches. The present article investigates the underlying change processes of theory-based handwashing interventions. A nonrandomised field study compared a standard approach to two theory-based interventions that were tailored to the target population, the inhabitants of four villages in southern Ethiopia (N = 408). Data were collected before and after interventions by structured interviews and analysed by mediation analysis. In comparison to the standard approach (i.e., education only), education with public commitment and reminder was slightly more effective in changing social-cognitive factors and handwashing. Education with an infrastructure promotion and reminder was most effective in promoting handwashing through enhancing social-cognitive factors. The results confirm the relevance of testing interventions' underlying change processes.

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BACKGROUND: Diarrheal disease kills around 760,000 infants every year. Many of these deaths could have been prevented by handwashing with soap. However, the whole range of psychological factors encouraging handwashing is not yet identified and handwashing campaigns are often limited to awareness-raising and education. The purpose of this article was to identify the psychological determinants of handwashing in Haiti (study 1) and Ethiopia (study 2). METHODS: Data were collected cross-sectionally by administering face-to-face interviews with the primary caregiver in a participating household (NHaiti = 811; NEthiopia = 463). Hierarchical multiple regression analyses were performed on self-reported handwashing. RESULTS: In both countries, risk factors-meaning awareness and health knowledge-accounted for only 11%-19% of variance in handwashing and were not consistently associated with handwashing. The inclusion of additional factor-groups, namely attitude, norm, ability, and self-regulation factors, led to significant increases in explained variance (P ≤ .01), accounting for 25%-44% of additionally explained variance. The attitude factor disgust, the norm factor, the ability factors motivational self-efficacy and perceived impediments, and the self-regulation factors coping planning and commitment emerged as especially relevant. CONCLUSIONS: Handwashing campaigns should focus especially on attitudes and norms and not only on risk.

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Improved hand hygiene efficiently prevents the major killers of children under the age of five years in Ethiopia and globally, namely diarrhoeal and respiratory diseases. Effective handwashing interventions are thus in great demand. Evidence- and theory-based interventions, especially when matched to the target population's needs, are expected to perform better than common practice. To test this hypothesis, we selected two interventions drawing on a baseline questionnaire-study that applied the RANAS (Risk, Attitudes, Norms, Abilities, Self-regulation) approach and focused on the primary caregivers of households in four rural, water-scarce kebeles (smallest administrative units of Ethiopia) in southern Ethiopia (N = 462). The two interventions were tested in combination with a standard education intervention in a quasi-experiment, as follows: kebele 1, education intervention, namely an f-diagram exercise, (n = 23); kebele 2, education intervention and public-commitment (n = 122); kebele 3, education intervention and tippy-tap-promotion (i.e. handwashing-station-promotion; n = 150); kebele 4, education intervention, public-commitment and tippy-tap-promotion (n = 113). In kebeles 3 and 4, nearly 100% of the households followed the promotion and invested material and time to construct for themselves a tippy-tap. Three months after intervention termination, the tippy-taps were in use with water and soap being present in up to 83% of the households (kebele 4). Pre-post data analysis on self-reported handwashing revealed that the population-tailored interventions, and especially the tippy-tap-promotion, performed better than the standard education intervention. Tendencies in observed behaviour and a recently developed implicit self-measure pointed to similar results. Changing people's hand hygiene is known to be a challenging task, especially in a water-scarce environment. The present project suggests not only to apply theory and evidence to improve handwashing interventions' effectiveness, but also emphasizes the relevance of tailoring interventions to the target population.

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