Public Perception and Acceptability toward Domestic Rainwater Harvesting in Golestan, Limits to Up-Scaling

This study tries to make a distinction between factors affecting adopters and nonadopters of domestic rainwater harvesting (DRWH) in Golestan Province, Iran. In order to better comprehend the differences, nine dimensions were considered in this study, including (1) social background (including respondents’ demographics, water sources, issues in accessing water sources, primary awareness of the DRWH systems, information communication channels, and their dwellings characteristics), (2) economic and financial scale (including construction, maintenance, investment rate of return), (3) scale (including law and regulation) (4) social scale (effect of social determiners on person’s decision making), (5) compliance with every day’s needs,(6) past experience, (7) image (importance of adopting DRWH systems on person’s social image and position), (8) providence (person’s outlook of the future), and (9) risk adoption. Results show that the surveyed groups vary remarkably in terms of considered dimensions. It seems that lack of experience and observation are the underlying reason of low adoption rate in this area.