Legacies of past institutionalized political discrimination reverberate in present-day patterns of commercial drinking water consumption. We investigate several case studies – redlining, the Voting Rights Act implementation in North Carolina, institutionalized neglect in Appalachia, and political marginalization of Hispanics in the Southwest – to illustrate the relationship between moral distrust of government and citizen-consumer behavior. We find that areas redlined in the 1930s are more likely to host present-day water kiosks. Parts of North Carolina protected by the Voting Rights Act in 1965 have lower present-day bottled water sales than unprotected areas. Counties located within Appalachia have higher bottled water sales than counties outside of Appalachia. Water kiosks in the Southwest today are most likely to be located in predominantly Hispanic communities. Commercial water companies capitalize upon these legacies of moral distrust to market commercial water products to politically marginalized populations. “Cultural” preferences for commercial water stem from citizen-consumers’ beliefs about the competence and morality of government.

The choices Americans make about the water that they drink reveal deeper lessons about civic life. Consumers’ spending choices reflect, in part, their identities as citizens, and citizens’ political decisions reflect their assessments of value as consumers. When government produces or regulates a basic service, the citizen-consumer’s choice between the public provider and a private, commercial firm reflects, in part, her trust in the institutions of government. Despite America’s widely available, highly reliable, high-quality tap water, the US commercial bottled water industry has exploded over the past two decades. This skyrocketing growth comes at a time of declining trust in American government. When tap water failures occur, citizen-consumers abandon utilities in favor of commercial water, and the most distrustful and politically marginalized people are most likely to opt for bottled water. Thus, distrust of government and consumption of bottled water are most pronounced among the poor and racial/ethnic minority communities. Commercial drinking water firms capitalize on this distrust with targeted marketing and growth strategies.

High-profile water contamination crises like the one in Flint, Michigan, shake confidence in US water systems. This chapter examines the links between tap water failure, reduced trust in utilities and government, and increased demand for commercial water. We show that negative experiences with basic service quality erode overall trust in government and increase demand for private alternatives. Analyses of data from three independent national surveys demonstrate that individuals who experience problems with their local water such as dirty, bad-tasting, or low-pressure water service also report lower trust in local, state, and federal government. The relationship between water service quality and trust in government persists after controlling for party identification, race, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status. We also find that tap water failure correlates with increased demand for commercial water sold from water kiosks, privately owned commercial water vendors. Taken together, these findings suggest that basic service failure erodes performative trust in government and increases demand for commercial drinking water.

Distrust in government is contagious. Awareness of drinking water problems can lead the public to distrust their own local water supply, even when people do not personally experience basic service failure. For examlple, lead-testing requests increased dramatically in Providence, Rhode Island, following the water crisis in Flint, Michigan. This chapter examines the ways that water quality problems in one water utility affect customer behavior in other communities. Using an SLX spatial econometric modeling strategy, we show that communities’ demand for commercial water increases in response to other communities’ tap water problems when the communities are demographically and/or socioeconomically alike. Notably, these “spillover” effects are strongest for communities that are socially similar: The physical distance between communities does not affect demand for commercial drinking water in the same way. These findings indicate that problems with tap water anywhere have the potential to cause distrust of tap water everywhere.