**1. Introduction**

Challenges to the safety of public drinking water are increasing as external drivers, including climate and land-use change, adversely impact the stability of drinking water sources [1–3]. Increasingly frequent disturbances, such as algae blooms, hypoxic conditions, or rising metal concentrations, jeopardize water quality in the lakes and reservoirs sourced for public drinking water, requiring drinking water managers to respond with new technologies and strategies [4,5]. One strategy with the potential to help utilities respond to changing environmental conditions is resilience-based management, a style that focuses on adaption and flexibility amidst change [6–8].

Disturbances to raw water sources not only present challenges to treating those water sources but can also threaten the social capital that resilient systems rely on. Concern about the quality of lakes and reservoirs and household drinking water has risen in recent years among Americans [9,10]. As these concerns rise, there is potential for them to spill over to impact the relationship between communities and the water utility managers, who supply their drinking water [11].

The ability of water utility managers to maintain resilient systems and quickly adapt to water quality issues often depends on their relationship with the community they serve [12]. Managers with high levels of community trust have the flexibility to adapt and respond

**Citation:** Grupper, M.A.; Schreiber, M.E.; Sorice, M.G. How Perceptions of Trust, Risk, Tap Water Quality, and Salience Characterize Drinking Water Choices. *Hydrology* **2021**, *8*, 49. https://doi.org/10.3390/ hydrology8010049

Received: 26 February 2021 Accepted: 13 March 2021 Published: 18 March 2021

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more quickly [12,13]. Trust can encourage citizen cooperation with managers through support for managemen<sup>t</sup> plans, increased speed and effectiveness of the enaction of those plans, and reduced backlash to managemen<sup>t</sup> shifts [14–17].

One behavioral indicator of community trust is the acceptance of tap water as a drinking source [18,19], although trust is not the only factor linked to water drinking behavior. Risk perceptions and personal experience with water quality (i.e., taste, smell, and appearance) are also related to the decision to drink tap water, utilize additional filters to treat it, or avoid it altogether e.g., [20,21]. For instance, residents in West Virginia who perceived higher risk associated with their tap water were more likely to drink bottled water compared to tap water, but not home-filtered water compared to tap [22]. Additionally, changes in taste, smell, and appearance of tap water are related to an individual's decision to drink from both bottled and home-filtered sources. Less favorable evaluations of tap water are commonly linked to the decision to drink from alternative water source choices [18]. Taste, in particular, has been linked to decisions to drink from bottled water sources as opposed to tap [23,24].

In areas where issues with water quality are slight or infrequent, the strength of associations and ease with which a person brings to mind water quality issues becomes a relevant factor. This issue of salience is related to the degree to which an individual may drink directly from the tap [25,26]. For instance, Grupper [27] found that residents' trust in a water utility to deliver safe drinking water varies based on two indicators of salience: (1) their familiarity with the water utility providing the water, and (2) the amount of attention they pay to variations in their water quality. Finally, other factors, including industry efforts to market sink and appliance filters as well as bottled water as "pure" sources of water, also contribute to the preference of bottled water and home-filtered water over tap water [28,29].

We focused this study on the roles of risk, trust, and salience in the choice of drinking tap water. Our goal was to explore in-home drinking water behavior in a community in southwest Virginia as a way to understand public trust in water utilities to provide safe and clean drinking water.
