Water

We study the policy, management, and public dimensions of water resources. Our work examines how people and institutions make decisions about water and provides evidence to inform planning, management, and policy.

Socially Sustainable Solutions for Water, Carbon, and Infrastructure Resilience in Oklahoma

The five-year National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded Socially Sustainable Solutions for Water, Carbon, and Infrastructure Resilience in Oklahoma (S3OK) project brought together researchers from across Oklahoma to study complex problems at the intersection of water, land use, climate, and infrastructure. A major focus of the project was water, including water availability, water quality and reuse, and the infrastructure needed to support more sustainable water systems.

IPPRA provided overall science leadership for the project and led its Social Dynamics team. This work examined how Oklahomans understand environmental and resource challenges, how different perspectives shape debates about potential solutions, and how researchers can better incorporate public and stakeholder perspectives into the development of those solutions. The project also created sustained opportunities for researchers to work directly with state and local governments, Tribal nations, nonprofit organizations, industry, and other stakeholders.

A central part of IPPRA’s work was the Meso-Scale Integrated Socio-geographic Network (M-SISNet), a long-running panel survey of Oklahoma households. Through M-SISNet, researchers tracked how Oklahomans understood and responded to changing environmental conditions and studied public perspectives on issues including water availability, water use and reuse, land management, energy, and infrastructure. The survey provided a way to connect technical research on these problems with evidence about how potential solutions were understood and valued by the people affected by them.

S3OK demonstrated how social science can be integrated with engineering, environmental science, and other technical research to address complex resource problems. The project produced new research and practical approaches to issues including municipal wastewater and stormwater reuse, produced water, agricultural water use, and infrastructure resilience, while building a model for bringing scientists and stakeholders together to develop solutions that are technically feasible and socially sustainable.

Selected publications

• Is it still the yuck factor? Public support and willingness to pay for municipal wastewater reuse in Oklahoma Science of The Total Environment, 2025
• Public Support and Willingness to Pay for Sustainable Water Reuse: The Case of Municipal Water Reuse Systems in Oklahoma Environmental Management, 2026

Reports, data and tools

• Oklahoma’s Wicked Problems: A Framework for Socially Sustainable Solutions for Water, Land Use, & Infrastructure (SHAREOK)
• Explore the Oklahoma panel survey (M-SISNet) in the S3OK dashboard

Glen Canyon Dam Operations and Public Values

IPPRA researchers developed and applied a new approach for understanding how the public values different ways of operating the Glen Canyon Dam and managing the Colorado River system. Changes in dam operations can affect many things at once, including river ecosystems, recreation, cultural resources, hydropower production, air quality, and rural communities. The project examined how people weigh these competing effects and tradeoffs when evaluating water management decisions.

The research combined reviews of existing studies and public testimony, input from Colorado River stakeholders, survey experiments, and nationally representative surveys. Using methods from non-market valuation and stated-preference research, the team estimated household willingness to pay for alternative dam operations and tested how preferences changed when people considered different environmental, social, cultural, and energy impacts.

The research showed that estimates of public value can change substantially depending on which effects are considered. The project developed an approach for studying these tradeoffs across interconnected water, environmental, energy, and social systems and incorporating a broader range of public values into water management decisions.

Selected publications

• Inclusive non-market valuation in Coupled Human and Natural Systems (CHANS): a motivating theory Journal of Environmental Economics and Policy, 2018
• Valuation in the Anthropocene: Exploring options for alternative operations of the Glen Canyon Dam Water Resources and Economics, 2016
• Benefit-Cost Analysis, Policy Impacts, and Congressional Hearings Journal of Benefit-Cost Analysis, 2019