Behaviours in relation to rural diffuse pollution

Significant efforts and resources have been deployed to mitigate rural diffuse pollution through regulatory, guidance and voluntary measures. Despite these ongoing efforts, rural diffuse pollution remains a persisten problem. In Scotland, the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA) has established a Diffuse Pollution Management Advisory Group (DPMAG). DPMAG has developed a two tiered strategy which includes awareness raising campaigns and a targeted approach in priority catchments, involving catchment walks, awareness raising and one-to-one farm visits.

This project focused on understanding the role of awareness in the uptake of mitigation measures. To this end, we will make use of the data gathered by the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA) during the farm visits in priority catchments.

This project was funded by the Scottish Government RESAS Strategic Research Programme 2016-21, as part of a portfolio of projects called RD 1.2.4 [1]. It ran from 2016 to Spring 2017.  This project was carried out by Paula Novo (who is now based at SRUC). For more information about this research or ongoing related projects please contact Kerry Waylen [2].

Outputs from this research

In January 2017 a short 3-page research briefing was produced that presents the main preliminary results of this work. Click here to download this briefing (pdf, 591KB) [3].  This corresponds with the first deliverable (KE1) from this project.

In March 2017 report shows the full analysis of how information and awareness affect uptake of measures to mitigate diffuse pollutio.  Click here to download this report (pdf, 546KB). [4] This corresponds with the second and final deliverable (D2.1) from this project.