This study uses mail survey methods to examine attitudes and behaviors toward water conservation throughout the Truckee River Watershed in California and Nevada. The survey area extends from California's Lake Tahoe Basin to Fallon and Pyramid Lake in Nevada, and includes the rapidly growing metropolitan area of Reno-Sparks, Nevada. The project will describe the range of water conservation attitudes throughout the Truckee River Watershed to determine what natural (e.g., geographical) and attitudinal communities exist, and to discover cross-jurisdictional opportunities for consensus building on water issues. It will also observe water conservation attitudes and behaviors across time to determine how these might be shifting as communities grow and diversify. In terms of general usefulness, this project will add contextually to existing work on conservation in two ways. First, relatively little conservation research has been applied to home water conservation (as opposed to conservation of energy, for example). And second, previous work examining water conservation has been executed within political boundaries (especially cities), versus more environmentally meaningful boundaries such as watersheds. Understanding how the diverse set of interests within the watershed can cooperate to share a vital, highly variable, and ultimately limited resource will offer valuable lessons. Policy efforts aimed at building such cooperation will be aided by a scientific understanding of the range of orientations toward water conservation throughout the watershed. Further, the rapid growth and diversification of the Reno-Sparks metropolitan area presents an outstanding opportunity to not only understand the dynamics of water conservation during such growth but also to consider and recommend information strategies and policy alternatives designed to promote conservation, both in Nevada and elsewhere.
