Given this slow-moving system that largely operates on political hunch and market research it would seem that detailed knowledge of what futures the community sees as sustainable and what trade offs the community is prepared to consider would be of great value. Thirty years of experience with community-based research have led to an observation that, given a facilitative environment, the community is often prepared to make choices which are decidedly more innovative than those currently being made on their behalf. For example, in the 1980s a carefully constructed longitudinal field-based study of the latitudes of tolerance (and intolerance) of a variety of possible restrictions policies in Perth was conducted (Nancarrow, Kaercher and Po 2002). The findings were very definitive. By far the preferred policy was for the then Level 1 restrictions to become permanent. On presentation of the results to the then Minister for Water Resources, these findings were dismissed. We were later told that it had been surmised at a political level that a state government had lost an election in the 1960s because of water restrictions. Of course it is hard to define whether and how such a ‘political urban myth’ affected the decidedly limp response to the social research. Nevertheless, it would seem that, when in doubt, the political environment will tend to prevail over service. The traditional engineering decision-making culture (Spearritt 2007) would tend to underscore this tendency.

One area where reform can be assisted by social science is that of ex-ante evaluation of innovative technologies. This has been the purpose of a long-term ‘water cultures’ program (Leviston, Porter and Nancarrow 2006) in which a generalised community decision-making model has been derived from examination of a number of innovations in several Australian cities (for example, high-rise water-recycling schemes, managed aquifer recharge, suburban recycling schemes and so on). A number of replicable elements to community-based decision-making have been found (see Figure 6.1). The models have gradually been refined and now can explain a very high proportion of the variability in acceptance (upwards of 80 per cent).

While it is not the purpose of this chapter to comment on the variables in detail, three important determinants can be related to the institutional context for achieving change. Institutions in this context relate not only to the formal governmental organisations or utilities but also the more informal groupings and cultural values embedded in the community. People tend to see acceptable sustainable reform in terms of institutional behaviour as well as the familiar triple bottom line. These institutionally related considerations are perceptions of acceptable risk, perceived fairness of the new system to all consumers and trust in the water utility and its decision-making processes. To achieve reform it is important, therefore, to spend some time on these variables to foster a process that can incorporate ongoing innovation. While there is obviously a need to understand the dynamics of risk, trust and fairness and how to create them, particular attention should be given to the concept of fairness as this has a strong shorter- as well as a longer-term component.

The overall judgment of fairness consists of three components (Tyler and Blader 2000; van den Bos and Lind 2002): distributive justice, relating to the proportion of benefits and costs that differing groups in society; procedural justice — whether the community feels that it has had an adequate opportunity within the decision-making process to make comment (for example, did it have a ‘voice’ or an opportunity to have an influence?); and ‘interactive’ justice, which is sometimes considered as a component of procedural justice. Simply stated, interactive justice reflects whether people feel as though they have been treated with respect and valued as individuals during the decision-making process.

Overall judgments of justice have two components, cognitive and affective. That is, fairness judgments involve logical thinking in relation to the issue at hand. These judgments also have a strong and significant emotive part. Emotion is important, as it is exhibited as a consequence of reactions to the perceived justice of treatment that has been given to the individual or his community (de Cremer and van den Bos 2007). For example, one can easily imagine that a perceived lack of procedural or interactive justice could be important in engaging the emotional side of fairness judgments. These feelings may also lead to an enduring sense of outrage and protest, particularly in the areas where risk is involved.

Thus, those who hope that the decision-making processes will remain rational and that emotion will be avoided would seem to be doomed to disappointment. Emotion is a basic part of human nature and an important component of democracy. The important point for this discussion is that getting our public processes ‘right’ will be a powerful driver of reform, especially as it is so hard to achieve within our current socio-political environment. The community can only participate and lead in reform if effective decision-making processes are put in place.

The cogency of this argument is also highly evident in a behavioural model developed by Leviston et al. (2006) for predicting actual individual consumption of recycled wastewater for potable purposes. This model (see Figure 6.2), the variables for which were derived from a community-based experimental study, like the ‘water culture’ model underlined the significance of the above discussion. As for the acceptance of new water-delivery systems, generally key variables for willingness to drink such water were trust in the agency, emotion (disgust or the ‘yuck’ factor) and perceptions of risk. The two other variables of significance were also of interest in predicting actual consumption of the water and, potentially, for conducting the public decision-making process. These were subjective norm, or the opinions of other significant others about the issue, and perceived control over the necessity to drink recycled water. Subjective norm tends to indicate that there will be conferring between individuals about the subject that is likely to lead to the desire for public debate.

Perceived control would seem to indicate that if people feel that they have been forced to drink recycled water by poor planning or lack of procedurally just decision-making processes, they will try to avoid it. Both the subjective norm and perceived control variables underscore the need for good participative processes.

In short, detailed, in-depth and preferably longitudinal social science research can provide a map of good process which can deliver on the fairness issues. Because the models show significant interrelationships between the achievement of fairness, the development of trust and more positive views of perceived risk, this fairness-based decision-making map becomes a central tool for planning and implementing productive reform.