The Role of Emotions in Water-Related Decision-Making Processes: A Systematic Scoping Review

Abstract

While a rich body of scholarship explored how emotions influence decisions over the use and allocation of water resources, a comprehensive review that synthesizes and integrates recent advances in understanding the role emotions play in water governance and management decision-making is lacking. This study implements a systematic scoping review utilizing Boolean literature searching technique to extract emotional connotations concerning water and environmental governance in English language scholarly records in Web of Science and Scopus databases. Drawing on emotional geography of water, this systematic review explores the emotional dispositions of communities between 2000-2025 at both intra-basin and inter-basin levels through the lens of spatial, temporal, and political nexuses. We contend that communities, particularly those that are marginalized, manifest deep emotional attachments to the flow of shared water at the temporal, political and spatial scales. These under-served communities, which are denied historical access to water (temporal nexus) and whose sacred spaces and landscapes (spatial nexus) are often occupied under colonialism (political nexus), experience deeply collective emotional distress resulting in the loss of their identity. Although this research lays the foundation for exploration of the emotional geography of water through an integrated spatialized, temporalized and politicized landscape, we contend that a number of inter-related, but important factors have been unexplored. This study suggests that examining the emotional dynamics of under-served communities, particularly Indigenous communities, through diverse cultural and linguistic perspectives will further enlighten the discourse of the emotional geography of water. Indeed, these narratives unravel how different communities feel, experience, value and connect to water. Such a nuanced view will lead to a more inclusive and comprehensive understanding of the emotional geography of water.

Keywords: Decisions; Emotional geography of water; Emotions; Riparians; Systematic scoping review.