**5. Conclusions**

Effective managemen<sup>t</sup> of drinking water resources benefits when water utilities can adapt and be flexible amid changing environmental conditions. Such resilient managemen<sup>t</sup> can be bolstered by positive relationships between water managers and the communities they serve [12]. In this study, we examined how community perceptions that can strengthen these relationships relate to drinking water behavior. We specifically examined the role of trust, risk perceptions, salience of drinking water, and water quality evaluations in their choice of in-home drinking water sources. We were particularly interested in the role of trust, a concept often studied in natural resource managemen<sup>t</sup> because of its positive relationship with resilient managemen<sup>t</sup> support, effective communication, and technology acceptance [13,14,16]. We allowed for the fact that people may vary in their in-home drinking water behaviors, enabling us to examine further differences that characterize behavioral patterns.

While other studies have demonstrated relationships between demographic variables such as income, educational level, and gender with water source consumption [41,61,62], it was not part of our research question. However, when we examine our data, we do not find a relationship between income, education level, or gender, and cluster membership.

Our results show that those who drink tap water often have more favorable tap water quality evaluations, have lower perceptions of its risk, pay more attention to tap water changes, and have higher trust in their water managers, especially compared to those who drink bottled water exclusively or from a sink filter. Managers may be able to use the link between high trust and tap water choice as an indicator of public trust. This can help them determine their need to promote this trust through efforts to increase communication between utilities and the public. As utilities shift to employing more resilience-based managemen<sup>t</sup> strategies, it is increasingly important to understand the ties between the public perceptions that define community relationships with their utilities and the drinking water behavior those communities engage in.

**Supplementary Materials:** The following are available online at https://www.mdpi.com/2306-533 8/8/1/49/s1: Table S1: Calinski/Harabasz test and Duda/Hart test for K means cluster analysis on water source choice; Table S2: One-way ANOVA results comparing drinking water behavior cluster means for each independent variable; Table S3: Post hoc pairwise comparisons of mean differences between pairs of clusters for each independent variable.

**Author Contributions:** Conceptualization, M.A.G. and M.G.S.; methodology, M.A.G., M.G.S., and M.E.S.; validation, M.A.G. and M.G.S.; formal analysis, M.A.G. and M.G.S.; investigation, M.A.G.; resources, M.A.G., M.G.S., and M.E.S.; data curation, M.A.G. and M.G.S.; writing—original draft preparation, M.A.G.; writing—review and editing, M.A.G., M.G.S., and M.E.S.; visualization, M.A.G., and M.G.S.; supervision, M.A.G., and M.G.S., M.E.S.; project administration, M.A.G., M.G.S.; funding acquisition, M.G.S., and M.E.S. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

**Funding:** This work was financially supported by the National Science Foundation gran<sup>t</sup> CNS-1737424.

**Data Availability Statement:** The data that support the findings of this study are not publicly available because of confidentiality restrictions with human subjects research. Ethical approval for this research study was granted by the Virginia Tech Institutional Review Board (IRB #19-023).

**Acknowledgments:** We would like to thank the Western Virginia Water Authority for their cooperation and help with our efforts. We also thank the students who distributed our survey and assisted with data entry: E. Bowlin, B. Wilson, A. Alls, A. Donnelly, A. Bosley, and Q. Hair.

**Conflicts of Interest:** The authors declare no conflict of interest. The funders had no role in the design of the study; in the collection, analyses, or interpretation of data; in the writing of the manuscript; or in the decision to publish the results.
