Public attitude towards wastewater reuse for irrigated agriculture in Saudi Arabia

Abstract

This study paper provides a general overview of the survey-based part of a study concerning wastewater reuse. This study was carried out in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), which is an arid region with limited freshwater resources. There is an urgent need to utilise non-conventional water resources (i.e. desalination and wastewater). A survey was conducted, and targeted a total of 400 eligible consumers to determine public attitude towards wastewater reuse practices in two main agricultural cities within the KSA. Namely Al-Hassa where there is an existing large-scale wastewater reuse project for unrestrictedirrigation, and Tabouk where there is a very limited wastewater ruse project; mainly irrigating beautification trees in small-scale. Particular emphasis is given to a scale of the acceptability of wastewater reuse. The content of the paper concerns the development of the scale, evaluation of the scale for validity and reliability and, identification of the dimensions of scale using factor analysis. Development of the scale resulted in twelve measures designed as five-point agreement scores (1 = strongly disagree, 5 = strongly agree). Scale reliability using Cronbach's alpha coefficient produced an alpha coefficient of 0.9, which indicates very high reliability. Factor analysis of the scale identified three dimensions of the acceptability of wastewater reuse. In descending order of importance these were defined respectively as the acceptability of agricultural use, domestic use and public use. © 2011 WIT Press.