SAI-R: Culturally Appropriate Language and Messaging for Influencing End User Behavior During Impending Infrastructure Failures

Strengthening American Infrastructure (SAI) is an NSF Program seeking to stimulate human-centered fundamental and potentially transformative research that strengthens America’s infrastructure. Effective infrastructure provides a strong foundation for socioeconomic vitality and broad quality of life improvement. Strong, reliable, and effective infrastructure spurs private-sector innovation, grows the economy, creates jobs, makes public-sector service provision more efficient, strengthens communities, promotes equal opportunity, protects the natural environment, enhances national security, and fuels American leadership.

To achieve these goals requires expertise from across the science and engineering disciplines. SAI focuses on how knowledge of human reasoning and decision making, governance, and social and cultural processes enables the building and maintenance of effective infrastructure that improves lives and society and builds on advances in technology and engineering.

The infrastructure supporting the public water supply is often the most vulnerable during times of disaster. Losing access to water can be life-threatening. Water utilities must explain to the public why conservation, boiling water, and protecting pipes are essential to avoid catastrophic infrastructure failure.

Yet utilities typically lack the resources and expertise needed to effectively communicate the importance of collaborative efforts to their end-users during such critical times. One challenge is the growing number of communication channels, including social media, text messaging, and wireless emergency alerts. Another challenge is anticipating cultural differences and the need to communicate effectively with diverse populations, including Spanish-speaking and older adult populations.

This SAI research project strengthens America’s water infrastructure by exploring cultural interventions with Spanish-speaking and older adult populations and using these studies to design and test messages that can impact human behavior.

This project designs and tests communication strategies that utilities can use with the public during disasters. A user-centered design approach is developed in partnership with water utilities that serve predominantly Spanish-speaking populations. The goal is to understand system vulnerability concerns during disasters and to identify current communication practices.

Community-centered research is used to uncover important cultural considerations that help tailor water utility messages for their audiences. The research draws from theory-informed message strategies that utilities can use to encourage cooperative end-user water-related behavior. Messages are tested through multiple communication channels, and the data are used to determine the impact of the messaging interventions on technical system performance and user attitudes and behaviors.

By focusing on effective communication with diverse populations, water utilities will be in a stronger position to protect this vital infrastructure. This award is supported by the Directorate for Social, Behavioral, and Economic (SBE) Sciences.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.