Percepções sobre o uso da água no Brasil

Abstract

Water is an essential environmental and human resource, but it has been consumed beyond sustainable levels. This fact may occur due to a lack of understanding of the amount of water spent on daily activities. Here we have investigated how Brazilians perceive the quantity of water they use at home. It was created a semi-structured online questionnaire composed of 22 questions measuring the views of participants on water quality, quantity, consumption, and saving and 11 socioeconomic questions. The questionnaire was approved by the institutional ethics committee. We used social media and e-mail lists to spread the questionnaire and the Snowball method to increase the number of respondents. To measure the participants' perception, we performed a multiple regression between the values answered and those observed in the literature. We selected some questions from the questionnaire, scored them and used them to compose indexes of knowledge, attitude and practice (KAP) ranging from 0 to 10, so that the closer to 10, the better knowledge, attitude and practice related to water saving domestic. A total of 1443 valid answers, mostly from the Southeastern (71.9%) and the minority from the North (4.6%) regions were collected. Most participants (93%) had at least a college-level education. Brazilians underestimated water use in a remarkably high level, with large underestimates for high water-use activities as washing cars with a hose and using non-economic washing machines. Factors such as age, country region and gender were associated with more accurate answers. Respondents showed a good knowledge (9.5) and good attitudes towards water conservation (8.4), but associated with poor practices (5.1), thus indicating that the fact of understanding the water saving importance is not translate into good practice. Our results highlight that efforts to correct misperception on water use are still needed. This work is the first of its magnitude in Brazil and will help to build environmental education policies