Smialek, Alexandra

Local service providers in cities around the world face both acute and chronic pressures to which they will need to adapt in order to continue to provide reliable public services. For water utilities, these pressures may include climatic shifts, demographic changes, infrastructure failures, water quality degradation and supply chain disruptions, among others. How water utilities choose between various adaptation actions available to them is not well understood; however, their adaptations decisions can influence their exposure to future risks and their long-term adaptation strategies.

To investigate what influences water utility adaptation, we conducted focus groups with local drinking water utilities in the U.S. We identify five types of institutional dependencies arising from the polycentric institutional environment and present a conceptual model that demonstrates how these dependencies constrain the choice of adaptation pathways for water utilities, for instance, by impacting the feasibility of or transaction costs associated with adaptation actions. Our results suggest that water utilities lack full autonomy over decisions that impact their ability to adapt to change.