therefore people tend not to draw personal implications from information advertised in mass
media (Park, Scherer, & Glynn, 2001). This study will test the strength of influence it has on the
respondents’ behavior. In this study, impersonal sources of information used to measure behavior
are mainly television and internet. Interpersonal information is comprised of family members
and friends. It has influence on beliefs at the personal level but not at the societal level, and this
study will test the strength of its influence on the respondents’ behavior and compare it to that of
impersonal information (Doria, Factors influencing public perception of drinking water quality,
2010). Education can influence people’s behavior because people at different educational levels
have different extent of knowledge on the subject of bottled water and tap water, and they tend to
choose different source of information. In this study, education level is measured by asking the
respondents their main source(s) of information. Physical location influences people’s beliefs on
bottled water and tap water since the quality of tap water varies in different locations, and that
people living in different places can possess different standard of quality of tap water.
In this study, only behavior of the respondent is measured. It must be recognized that
behavior does not always reflect attitude, but for the purpose of this study, it is assumed that the
behavior and attitude of the respondent are consistent. There may be coverage error because all
the people sampled are either current college students or college graduates, so they do not
represent all the populations from different cultural and educational background. However, if the
study is limited to college students and recent graduates specifically, the coverage error could be
eliminated. Lastly, there could also be nonresponse error, which results in a too small size of
sample