Images That Engage People With Sustainable Urban Water Management

This study explored responses to categories of images relevant to an environmental management issue—stormwater management—across three dimensions that influence engagement: emotional response, personal relevance, and topic congruence. Although images of oceans elicited positive emotions, most participants did not perceive such images as relevant to the topic. Images of traditional stormwater infrastructure evoked negative emotions and were perceived as topic congruent but not personally relevant. Images of flooding were ranked highly across all three dimensions. These findings have implications for the development of communication materials that appeal to the broader public