摘要：This study aimed at exploring the perceptions, evaluations and attributions regarding water usage in a context of tension and conflict between different categories of users of the same river basin. To this end, 201 people who use one basin originating in the northern slope of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta (SNSM) were interviewed. The interviewees belonged to different sociocultural categories: Colombian natives, city dwellers, and peasants. Four points were assessed: attributions of the causes of water misuse, estimation of the amount of water used, types of perceived and/or attributed uses for water and judgements regarding water usage among the groups of users. It is concluded that tension exists between users living in the city and those living in the countryside. The former are considered to be responsible for misusing and contaminating water. This evaluation is essentially based on the types of use perceived. We confirmed the initial hypothesis that is based on the influence of the living environment in social representations, perceptions, and judgments about an environmental object and on the intergroup relationships of those who share a territory and its resources.
