DENVER, CO, MARCH 31, 2017 — The Water Research Foundation (WRF), a leading sponsor of innovative research supporting the water community, is pleased to announce a new project that will help clean water agencies explore how forward thinking utilities and companies leverage emotional motivators in public engagement programs to develop sustainable relationships with their customers. Awareness of water scarcity is disconnected from the deceptive abundance of this resource in many developed countries. This poses a challenge to clean water agencies advocating water stewardship. Social scientists such as Paul Slovic and Daniel Kahneman have long recognized the power of emotional involvement (the affect heuristic) in decision making and hence community building. Effective messaging and educative materials and/or programs that take advantage of research on emotional connectors is vital to tangibly demonstrate the value of water and the technology that creates clean water. WRF’s new project, “Forging Powerful and Sustainable Relationships Between Clean Water Agencies and the Community” (#4678), has two main objectives: Assess which emotional motivators and customer engagement practices are…