Author(s): Yongping Wei; Haili Zhao; Yan Zhao; Meng Ding; Zhiqiang Zhang

Linked Author(s):

Keywords: Water values; Social equality; Economic development; Environmental protection; Water-saving society; Questionnaire survey

Abstract: Measuring and reporting an individual’s view and practice on the Triple Bottom Line (TBL) of social equality, economic development and environmental protection for sustainable development remains complete. This paper aims to investigate famers’ perceptions of TBL on water use. Zhangye City, a very arid region and the first experimental site for the national initiative of Building the Water-saving Society in China, was selected as the case study area. A questionnaire-based interview approach was adopted to collect farmers’ rating of the importance of water for social security, economic development and ecological sustainability from 900 randomly selected farm households in 18 irrigation districts. The results show that 43% of the total respondents rated economic development as the most important, 27.6% chose social security, while 29.4% rated ecological sustainability as the first. It is found that personal characteristics of farmers among a myriad of factors showed most statistically significant correlation with farmers’ perception of water use. Some variables, such as age and occupation, influence the farmers’ perceptions of all three dimensions or at least two dimensions of water use but in different directions. The findings are of important implications for designing water policies for sustainable development.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/15715124.2019.1566237

Year: 2020