An approach to measuring individual endorsement of social-ecological resilience of water systems

The role of the individual is increasingly a focus in sustainability discourses. We develop and operationalize indicators to measure individual attitudes as they relate to social-ecological resilience, using water systems (or ‘water resilience’) as a focusing concept. We developed a questionnaire instrument and use a vignette technique for addressing the complexity of social-ecological resilience. The instrument was pilot tested in three stages and through this process we refined it. Results from the pilot study (Stage 3) indicated that endorsement of the principles of resilience was high overall, and that two factors emerged from the seven principles (one focused on the physical system and the other on governance) that could be considered in future studies. These indicators and the technique used to collect data for them is promising for the purpose of assessing individual level attitude alignment with social-ecological resilience of water systems, and further testing of this instrument in other settings is recommended.