Attitudes Toward Bottled Water Among High School Students

This cross-sectional instrument-development and validation study examined the dimensions underlying high school students’ attitudes toward bottled water and whether dimension scores varied across demographic and water-use groups. Data were collected in Diyarbakır, Türkiye, in two phases during April–May 2026. The first-phase file contained 588 records; 583 complete cases were used for exploratory analyses. A separate later sample included 1594 students for confirmatory factor analysis and group comparisons. Six related dimensions were identified: environmental concern and sustainability, perceived health and safety of bottled water, convenience-driven and habitual use, social endorsement, comparative evaluation of bottled versus tap water, and reusable-bottle support with plastic-waste discomfort. The six-factor confirmatory model showed satisfactory fit. Students from bottled- or filtered-water households reported stronger health-and-safety beliefs and comparative evaluations favouring bottled water than students from tap-water households. More frequent reusable-bottle use was associated with greater environmental concern and reusable-bottle support, while female students reported both greater environmental concern and greater convenience-driven use. These findings show that environmental concern can coexist with health, convenience, and social motives that sustain bottled-water use.