Water policy beliefs, emotions, and support [Author Accepted Manuscript]

Various policies can improve and protect water quality. Understanding why residents prefer specific policies over others can help decision-makers select and modify policies in response to community preferences, thereby addressing community reactions to proposed policies. We examined hope, anxiety, anger, and neutral policy emotions and their association with policy outcome and norm beliefs to understand why people prefer some policies over others. New Hampshire respondents (N = 426) contemplated three water quality policies. Policies were developed from suggestions made by members of local environmental groups and staff from the New Hampshire Department of Environmental Protection. Hope and anxiety about the policies were better predictors of policy support than anger and neutrality. Moreover, hope was a stronger predictor than anxiety. Outcome beliefs were derived from each respondent's list of anticipated policy consequences. Norm beliefs were derived from the groups that respondents identified as supporting and opposing policies and how close they felt toward these groups. The outcome and norm beliefs were positively associated with policy hope and negatively associated with policy anxiety and anger. Together, results indicated that hope and anxiety mediated the effects of outcome and norm beliefs on policy support.