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Article History

Received: 27 July 2024

Accepted: 5 June 2025

First Online: 20 June 2025

Competing interests

: The author(s) declare no competing interests.

: This study was exempt from ethical approval by the Ethics Committee for Human Sciences—(ECHW) of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB), Pleinlaan 2, 1050 Brussel (Advice from the ECHW, Reference Number: ECHW_639), as it did not involve minors, has no harmful or controversial content, bears no risk to participants in completing the survey, contains no deception of participants; did not ask for personal data and relies completely on voluntary participation to the study. The authors confirm that this study was conducted in full accordance with the ethical principles outlined in the Declaration of Helsinki, and all data used in this research were obtained and processed in compliance with GDPR.

: This study utilises survey data collected by iVox/Bilendi from their online panel. Article 7 of the signed agreement between the university and iVox/Bilendi stipulates that both parties must comply with the relevant laws and regulations applicable to the processing of personal data. This includes Regulation (EU) 2016/679 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 27 April 2016, which entered into force on 25 May 2018 (hereinafter the ‘General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)” (). Furthermore, the participants were informed by the researchers that they would be participating in a study regarding the perception of information provided by newspaper-like articles. In order to avoid any influence on the participants’ pre-existing notions regarding wastewater reuse, it was deemed appropriate to refrain from disclosing the topic of the newspaper article beforehand. Participants were informed of this procedure and were able to stop the survey at any time. Participants were given the opportunity to decide whether or not to participate and to ask questions to the researchers. The data were anonymised by iVox/Bilendi prior to delivery.