Nutrients & Nuance: The Complicated Science Behind Effective Water Communications

A Rose by any other name would smell as sweet - but does word choice impact our opinions?

In this episode, Dr. Sadie Hundemer, assistant professor of Agricultural Education and Communication, discusses the study of human behavior, and how understanding mental models and trusted sources can improve the way we talk about water science issues. 

The opinions expressed by guests on this podcast are their sole responsibility do not represent positions, policies or opinion of the University of Florida, UF/IFAS, or the UF/IFAS Department of Food and Resource Economics.

Got thoughts on the episode, questions for us, or an idea for what we should cover next? Reach out to us by email at fre@ifas.ufl.edu

Intro and Outro Music - "Just Kidding" - Ahjay Stelino. Used under the Mixkit Stock Music Free License.

Transcript

00;00;06;12 - 00;00;18;21

Alena Poulin

Welcome to the FRE Lunch, the official podcast of the Food and Resource Economics department at the University of Florida. I'm Alena Poulin, the marketing and communications specialist for the department.

00;00;18;23 - 00;00;34;23

Caleb Stair

And I'm Caleb Stair, assistant instructional professor of food and resource economics and the coordinator for undergraduate research in the department. Meaning I get to interact regularly with the members of our UF community and see all the cool and interesting topics being explored.

00;00;34;28 - 00;00;48;01

Alena Poulin

That's why we made this podcast! To showcase the many ways students and faculty are using research to understand and address the complex issues facing agricultural and natural resource industries.

00;00;48;03 - 00;00;57;13

Caleb Stair

In 2025, there's lots of interesting issues that economics can be applied to, but that's only one faucet of the whole solution.

00;00;57;14 - 00;01;09;13

Alena Poulin

To get the complete picture on one of these issues where teaming up with the UF Water Institute and new co-host Sara Marc for a deep dive into the fathoms of Florida's fresh water.

00;01;09;15 - 00;01;20;12

Sarah Marc

Hi, I'm Sam Marc, the communications and events specialist for the Water Institute. Essentially, we serve as a connector between collaborators across the university and beyond.

00;01;20;15 - 00;01;30;17

Caleb Stair

From communication to condensation. That's right. For today's episode of FRE Lunch’s Water season, we will discuss communication strategies and surrounding issues.

00;01;30;21 - 00;01;38;11

Alena Poulin

Communication is necessary about topics related to water because these are not just technical challenges, they are also deeply human.

00;01;38;13 - 00;01;49;06

Caleb Stair

A lot of the economic issues discussed on this podcast relate to how consumer perceptions impact behavior. But how do we actually influence behavior?

00;01;49;13 - 00;01;56;16

Sarah Marc

Social science helps us understand how people think, feel and behave when it comes to water use, protection and policy,

00;01;56;18 - 00;02;03;15

Caleb Stair

Effective communication ensures that this understanding is shared and usable by decision makers and the general public.

00;02;03;20 - 00;02;08;22

Sarah Marc

And part of communications is asking questions. How many glasses of water had you had today, Caleb?

00;02;08;22 - 00;02;10;13

Caleb Stair

Anyway moving on.

00;02;10;15 - 00;02;25;20

Alena Poulin

Different stakeholders often have different priorities. Good communication helps us uncover shared values and reduce perceived conflicts. This is important because even a single word like nutrients can mean wildly different things depending on who you are.

00;02;25;22 - 00;02;36;26

Sarah Marc

Whether you're a water whiz kid or just a water wonderer, this episode helps unpack the psychology, language, and trust dynamics behind water decisions and how better understanding can lead to better outcomes.

00;02;36;28 - 00;02;48;25

Caleb Stair

To help unpack this, we are joined by Doctor Sadie Hundemer. She is an assistant professor in the AG Ed and Communication Department and has been with us for three years. Sadie, thanks for joining us.

00;02;48;27 - 00;02;50;02

Sadie Hundemer

Thanks for having me.

00;02;50;04 - 00;02;54;19

Caleb Stair

So to start off, could you just tell us about yourself and what you do?

00;02;54;23 - 00;03;23;23

Sadie Hundemer

I am a social scientist and specifically looking at human dimensions of agriculture and natural resources issues and topics. And I would say there's a couple dimensions of my work, kind of the bread and butter is understanding the drivers of attitudes and behaviors on egg and natural resources topics. So a lot of that has been dealing with water in our region, particularly perceptions of behaviors related to water protection and the flood and aquifer seeking.

00;03;23;23 - 00;03;31;09

Sarah Marc

Sadie was working with the UF Water Institute on the Facets project for the last six years. Now she's working on a new project, on cover crop Adoption.

00;03;31;11 - 00;03;38;03

Caleb Stair

Sadie has also started a new initiative that I get to play a small role in, called Ethics of Expertise.

00;03;38;05 - 00;04;21;20

Sadie Hundemer

That kind of stems from this idea that as experts, those of us who work in higher education have certain social responsibilities, and there's not a lot of preparation for how to manage those responsibilities. And so you can kind of think of them as you have responsibilities to objectivity, of course, but also responsibilities to public impact. And with objectivity, it can be taken as you're supposed to turn off your values to be objective. Whereas when you're trying to have public impact, you have to do something that affects values. And so how do you balance those things and give advice to inform value-based decision making without imposing too much of your values into it? So we're working with land grant scientists across the US to understand that.

00;04;21;21 - 00;04;31;16

Alena Poulin

Sadie’s expertise encompasses many facets of agriculture and natural resources. But her interest in water has grown over time, as her work has explored the topic.

00;04;31;18 - 00;05;21;17

Sadie Hundemer

My main interest and driver is understanding the human behavior behind any of these topics, and water is a great forum for exploring that, because water, of course, touches everyone's lives in different ways, and it's also something that you can't like. You can't stop impacting water, like where you're going to use water. We're going to engage in behaviors that affect water. So it's not that you can just something a behavior that you can stop. Kind of an example that I like is that, you know, the ideal level of water contamination isn't zero, because if it was zero, then we wouldn't have any of the other activities that contribute to society. So how do you balance those trade offs between interest groups who would have us prioritize certain things over others? So yeah, water has ended up being a really good forum to understand these human dimensions and create meaningful impacts for society through that.

00;05;21;23 - 00;05;38;17

Caleb Stair

Turns out there's a bit of a gap in understanding between the general public and somebody who specializes in water. Take the word aquifer, for example. Sure, the word aqua is in it, so it must relate to water. But where is that located? That's a bit more of a toss up.

00;05;38;19 - 00;06;00;24

Sadie Hundemer

If we talk about the general public. General public doesn't know a whole lot about water. When we do assessments to understand their knowledge levels related specifically in this area to the Floridian aquifer, I would find that, you know, a lot of the population doesn't even understand that the aquifer is under their feet. And there's the dominant source that we're relying on for water in this region.

00;06;00;27 - 00;06;07;12

Sarah Marc

But how much does the public need to know to make informed decisions? Part of this is what Sadie and her colleagues aim to learn more about.

00;06;07;15 - 00;06;47;24

Sadie Hundemer

There's also certain things that you need to know to be able to be a good public citizen and be able to make good voting decisions on water. And so, like there is a central set of things. You don't need to be a hydrologist, you don't need to know everything about water to make good water decisions. But there probably is an essential set. And I would say that at this point in time, we don't necessarily have that level of water knowledge amongst the public. What else we know about perceptions? Generally, the public is in support of water protective actions, even if it comes at a tax cost. We also know, though, that public perceptions are highly influenced by political influences. So even though there is general support, that support can change based on the messaging that they hear.

00;06;47;27 - 00;06;57;18

Alena Poulin

I think that's a really interesting point to have. You know, with human behaviors and competing interests, it's hard to know what those would be if you don't know enough about the topic to decide what your interest is.

00;06;57;21 - 00;07;18;17

Sadie Hundemer

Exactly. Yeah. So we have we have conducted studies where we started off by like introducing the core knowledge that you would need to understand the trade offs that you're making and then put the policy options in front of them. Being very explicit about these are the trade offs that you're making based on these things that you now know about the water science.

00;07;18;20 - 00;07;26;24

Sadie Hundemer

And when we do that, that's when we see that actually the vast majority of people want the same things. Yet they're not coming to it with that understanding.

00;07;26;27 - 00;07;32;08

Caleb Stair

So how exactly do we carry out those studies to find out more about these perceptions?

00;07;32;16 - 00;08;41;10

Sadie Hundemer

With the public knowledge, we actually send surveys that have these basically test questions in them to people throughout the region. And so we get large sample responses to understand what they actually know. We do experiments where we will present, for example, a water policy and have it in some circumstances presented as a fairness issue or a loyalty issue, and then we'll switch it up an we’ll have those messages be sent or presented as though they're coming from someone who's liberal or someone who's conservative? And if we change up all these variables, then we can see what are people responding to. And so then we see things like, okay, like the way that we talk about it, if we talk about it in a positive manner, of course support goes up. But then what really is moderating the difference between like liberal, conservative perceptions, is who is talking about that policy. And so depending on who the speakers are, the issue can become very polarized or not polarized. And so it's all of these variables of the framing and not necessarily the subject of that policy itself, that when we take those extraneous variables out, actually people tend to want the same thing.

00;08;41;10 - 00;08;45;29

Alena Poulin

So it's not even just like trust in the person giving the information,  its also almost like how much like you personally aligned with them?

00;08;45;29 - 00;09;14;12

Sadie Hundemer

Yeah. And you would think like that makes sense because if you don't know a lot about the topic, well, you have to trust somebody to to tell you what you should be thinking. And so people are going to generally trust those who share values with them. So it makes sense. It's a good like decision making shortcut that we all do. Right. Because you can't possibly know have all the knowledge on everything. You have to have the shortcuts and so the shortcut is okay, who appears trustworthy to me based on my experience?

00;09;14;12 - 00;09;18;05

Sarah Marc

And then what other challenges appear when you want to communicate about water topics?

00;09;18;11 - 00;09;50;01

Sadie Hundemer

So the way it has been presented can make it appear that there is conflict and difference in the values and interests of these groups, agriculturalists and environmental interest groups. But when we actually talk to them and we survey them on what their interests are, we find that both groups prioritize water for crops and water for ecosystems, and they are pretty unified in also what they see as the problems that contribute to declines in water quantity and quality.

00;09;50;03 - 00;09;55;16

Sadie Hundemer

The area that they don't necessarily agree is the impact of agriculture on those things.

00;09;55;22 - 00;10;17;21

Caleb Stair

And this makes total sense because different groups are going to perceive the world in different ways. Or in other words, they have different mental models about how the world works. And that's what Sadie's work is focused on. She's trying to create or showcase these mental models so that all sides can see the best path forward.

00;10;17;25 - 00;10;55;09

Sadie Hundemer

So an example of that would be one of the things that producers are often thinking about appears in their mental models of water issues is risk management. That there is a risk management aspect that goes into farming, and the application of fertilizer and the use of water that isn't necessarily in the mental model of our environmental interests, because they're not interacting with water that way. And so if you know, we are in a space now that we can help everyone understand the decision making that goes into use of water and use of fertilizer, then it helps them work together towards solutions that we've already identified, that they want the same things.

00;10;55;12 - 00;11;03;22

Sarah Marc

One of the groups involved in this whole process are experts such as yourself or hydrologist, or anyone researching water related topics. What role do you view they should play?

00;11;03;27 - 00;11;42;06

Sadie Hundemer

Yeah, and there is of course not a right answer to how to do these things. And you know, that part of what the reason I'm doing this research is that there isn't a lot of guidance to scientists or to faculty about how to advise in these ways that allows you to support value based decision making while not making those value based decisions and being a fair player in it. And there's an idea of being an honest broker, honest broker, meaning that decision makers on their own, without the support of the expert, they can only open up so many policy options or programmatic options because they don't have the full scope of expertise.

00;11;42;08 - 00;11;52;07

Alena Poulin

Having those experts in the room opens us up to a wider range of options, which is a valuable thing. Over time, our understanding of the role that different experts play has changed.

00;11;52;13 - 00;12;39;01

Sadie Hundemer

So I think we've kind of evolved to a place where we generally understand that the expert has a role to play in policy making, but then again, it's like, okay, how how far do you go? And so I'm talking to different land grant scientists across the country. We're finding that there are some different approaches, but there's also a lot of commonality. And I see that they're definitely trying to present information in a way that allows the decision maker to make the decision based on their values. So part of that is understanding who you're working with and how they are basing that decision and being able to not put it in the terms of, you know, your personal values, but of the decision makers interests and needs. But then I think there's a level above that which is also understanding that we're not only supporting that individual decision maker, but also society as a whole.

00;12;39;08 - 00;12;51;08

Caleb Stair

That decision maker could be anyone from a legislator to a landowner. And the actions that they take based on recommendations from different experts, have a ripple effect downstream in society.

00;12;51;14 - 00;13;09;12

Sadie Hundemer

As an honest broker, the scientist or the expert is laying out, okay, these are these is the implication for you. Let's also yeah, there's also implications for broader society. It's your decision. I'm giving you all the information that you need to make the decision that you have, and I'm there to support you and answer your questions. In doing that, how.

00;13;09;12 - 00;13;13;04

Sarah Marc

Does understanding perceptions of different groups benefit communication efforts?

00;13;13;09 - 00;14;02;14

Sadie Hundemer

Yeah. So one example of that is as I talked about, we kind of we've done work to understand the mental models of different groups. And so what we do is this is actually a technique where we use cards related to the topic. So in this case like a water topic. And in our floor and aquifer region. And we have them actually take these cards that have terms on them and lay them out to understand, okay, these are these are the things that are in the way that I think about this issue. And these are the how these different components fit together in the system. And so we have large groups do that for, as I've been talking about with agriculturalists and our environmental interest groups. And so we can see visually what is in their conceptions of the topic and what's missing, or where are their misperceptions. And also not only what misperceptions of the system, but how do they think about how the other group thinks about it.

00;14;02;17 - 00;14;07;11

Alena Poulin

This allows us to better shape our communications so that they meet them where they are.

00;14;07;13 - 00;15;33;26

Sadie Hundemer

I'll give you a very specific example of this. One of the when we do this card activity, one of the terms is nutrients. And so nutrients. When we have our agriculturalists working on this, they put nutrients with the inputs to their agricultural operation that keeps them, you know, working and successful. It's an input. And when we have our environmental interests doing it, they're putting it in a, you know, contaminant pile. Well, if I'm now a communicator and I'm using that word nutrients, I know that I have two different groups going to two different places in their mind because of that. Now, that's not to say I don't use the word, it's just to say that I need to be aware of how the way I talk is also affecting the way that they're thinking about whatever that topic is, because even just a word can prompt a thought and take us to like the next sequential thought about what this all means. But I would also say like another key component of this, like mental modeling type of research is for the researcher, me in this case, to understand my own mental model as it fits into this situation because I know there's always the risk of the influence, and this is part of being an honest broker, is understanding what biases you might bring to it. And am I coming to this situation in a place that maybe my mental model is more aligned with one group or the other, or I'm just thinking about it totally differently, and I'm not talking about it in a way that's effective, and I don't really understand where they're coming from, and it allows me to kind of check myself.

00;15;33;28 - 00;15;50;02

Caleb Stair

I think it's a great point you brought up about being able to check and identify our own biases. This could even impact your research, because if you determine what people think about a word and then change the way a question is asked, it might reveal something new.

00;15;50;05 - 00;16;02;10

Sadie Hundemer

Yeah, you have a survey question. You put nutrients in it. Yeah. You've made the response to a certain way that you were not intending. It’s  not really what you were after. You were not trying to understand how they think about the word nutrients. You're trying to get at something else. And now you've totally messed up your assessment.

00;16;02;13 - 00;16;10;29

Sarah Marc

And it's interesting how these mental models and the different views create challenges when they affect stakeholders. What are the ways we can encourage collaboration and a meeting of the minds?

00;16;11;02 - 00;19;10;19

Sadie Hundemer

It's just very difficult because you can think about when we're talking about water. Every single person is affected by water. You're never going to have all of those, you know, you're not going to have people's time and attention to talk about these things. That's the reason that people's knowledge on this is low, because they have other priorities in their life, and we can't invest that much in understanding, you know, each aspect of the decisions that we make on a daily basis. But as I said earlier, people have these shortcuts to decision making. They rely on people who whether it's, you know, a policymaker or it's the guy down the street that I know he's up on this topic, that that's really kind of been our strategy is we want to have those influencers of different groups. There's opinion leaders involved in the work that we're doing and involved in it early on. Like this is co-designed co-produced research where they're helping us figure out and really we're figuring it out together. How should we be thinking about these questions and approaching them? So when we do research on water impacts, they understand what went into those models that were running and they had the opportunity to if there was an input going in, like so in this one of these water projects, you know, we're modeling how use of nutrients is affecting the water supply when you're growing certain types of crops. And they're the people they're like our, you know, our agricultural representatives saying like, that's not a reasonable amount of carrots that would be grown. Like they looked at one of the models and they're like, this is this is way off the charts of that. And then they're identifying where there are issues and they're working side by side with the scientists to make sure that we're accurately representing the real world. Now, since they're bought into that process, they can help, you know, other people understand that, that people who are not going to be directly involved, but who will listen to their neighbor friend who they see is, you know, doing good work and who they trust. But also in in that process, you know, we've got the agriculturalists there working with us, but also the people from the environmental interest groups. And also they're all we're all working together. And so in doing that, you get these exposures of things like, oh, I now I understand why you are using water this way on your farm. There is a reason behind that, I get it. Let's work together to figure out what is this, the solution that is beneficial to all of our interests and that is practical in the real world. I think it's kind of getting past all of the stereotypes to the, okay, these are people and they're have a logical reason for thinking what they do. And another challenge, though, is that that's like a really slow process, like we were working together on that project for six years, and that's not like a reasonable expectation for anyone, really. And so again, it's like, who who do you need to have invested that can help, like domino effect those understandings. And hopefully some of those like relationship building elements of the project.

00;19;10;26 - 00;19;27;04

Alena Poulin

So it seems as though many water issues are affected by individual behavior, like how much water people use or how they manage their land. Communication strategies can influence their behavior in positive ways by connecting actions to outcomes that people care about.

00;19;27;07 - 00;19;35;27

Sarah Marc

This ensures that many voices and experiences are included in water decision making. It helps surface the ideas of those most impacted. It promotes better solutions.

00;19;35;29 - 00;19;49;19

Caleb Stair

Scientists who act as honest brokers, just like Sadie said, help expand the range of policy options by translating complex findings into relevant, actionable insights without imposing their own values.

00;19;49;27 - 00;19;56;17

Alena Poulin

Ultimately, communication is what connects science to society. Without it, even the best research can't make an impact.

00;19;56;22 - 00;20;04;22

Sarah Marc

And communications is a two-way street. If you have any ideas or thoughts about this water season, we'd love to hear them, and we hope that you continue enjoying a FRE lunch.

00;20;04;26 - 00;20;25;03

Caleb Stair

And for more information about what Sadie and the rest of the AEC is doing, see the links in the description. If you've made it this far, you've finished the entire episode and we thank you for that. Tune in next time for more food for thought. Thanks again for joining us on this episode of Free Lunch. We hope you'll come back again for seconds.