2.3.3. Risk

We measured the residents' perceived risk of tap water using five indicators assessing cognitive safety, affective safety, cognitive severity, affective severity, and comparative risk. Cognitive safety assessed the residents' beliefs about the likelihood of tap water safety issues by asking the respondents to rate how safe they believed their water was from 1 = *Completely unsafe to drink* to 5 = *Completely safe to drink*. The affective safety item asked how concerned the residents were about their tap water safety (1 = *No concern* to 5 = *Extremely concerned*). To identify how severely the residents believed a public water disturbance could impact their lives, the respondents indicated how they would react cognitively (inconvenience and daily routine change) and affectively (worry and anger) and if they found themselves unable to access tap water in their homes. We measured these items on a 5-point Likert-type scale from 1 = *Not at all* to 5 = *A great deal*. Lastly, to measure comparative risk, we chose to focus on the risk of drinking bottled water compared to tap water. The respondents ranked tap water on a 5-point Likert-type scale from 1 = *More safe* to 5 = *Less safe*.
