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Most research into the connections between water and energy, water and food, and food and energy has been scientific and technical; little research has examined the public’s understandings of these connections. This article studies these understandings and awareness of nexus issues using a 2015 national public opinion survey on the water–energy–food nexus. Responses from this representative sample of U.S. adults are used to create “awareness measures” for elements of the nexus—water and energy, water and food, and energy and food—which are then used as independent variables to investigate the extent to which awareness is associated with support for public policies designed to address these nexus interconnections. All three measures are significantly correlated to support for policy options. Results suggest that awareness of the water–energy–food nexus may represent conditions necessary for supporting policies and that building such awareness could represent an important pathway for increasing support for policy interventions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

American cities vary considerably in the degree to which they pursue sustainability. What explains this variation? One plausible cause of such differences is that sustainability may be more appealing to high-income cities than to more economically challenged cities. Yet such strict economic determinism seems simplistic and removes politics from an inherently political process. The hypothesis here is that any such relationship between income and commitment to sustainability is conditioned by a city's level of environmental advocacy. The data utilized in this analysis are derived from two large-scale data sources. One is a comprehensive inventory of sustainability programs and policies in 50 large American cities. The other is a set of surveys in those same 50 cities. The multivariate model supports the hypothesis. Controlling for income growth and the predisposition of policymakers to be supportive of sustainability (as well as other alternative explanations), a city's commitment to sustainability is strongly linked to the advocacy of environmental and sustainability groups in the policymaking process. The example of Sustainable Seattle is used to illustrate the linkages that would seem to underlie the statistical analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]