The reauthorized Safe Drinking Water Act of 1996 added provisions requiring all community water systems (CWS) to deliver annual water quality reports called Consumer Confidence Reports (CCRs) to their customers. With an estimated 46,000 CWS required to develop and distribute CCRs to their customers each year, the CCR requirement poses an important challenge for water utilities to disseminate information to their customers. The research reported here was conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of CCRs and to better understand the impact of CCRs on water utility customers-specifically, to evaluate (1) whether and how CCRs influence consumer perceptions, and (2) what attributes of CCRs most influence consumers' perceptions.