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We test and compare different incentives in motivating water conservation using a randomized controlled trial. In a field experiment carried out with Singaporean households, regular feedback was given, with informative, normative and monetary incentives provided to different groups. Evidence shows that all households saved an average of 4 Litres of...
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... divide the treated group into two subgroups: low and high baseline households, which refer to those with the baseline period LPCD below and above the median baseline water usage of the sample respectively. Fig 5 illustrates the difference in treatment effects by the two subgroups. It clearly shows that high baseline households respond more to the treatment, by saving much more water than the low baseline households. ...
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... Public pressure to reduce the amount of water and chemicals required for lawns in the United States is increasing. Previous studies have examined the factors and interventions that may impact household water conservation behavior (Addo, Thoms, and Parsons, 2018;Fielding et al., 2012;Goette, Leong, and Qian, 2019;Qaiser et al., 2011;Willis et al., 2011). Many states, including Minnesota, have recently imposed restrictions on phosphorus fertilizer (Lee and McCann, 2018), and outdoor watering restrictions are common throughout the country (Milman and Polsky, 2016). ...
Adopting eco-friendly technologies, such as converting lawns to alternative low-input grass species, can reduce household expenditures and mitigate negative environmental impacts at the same time. However, the rate of adoption of these technologies has not been as high as expected. This study develops a behavioral framework to identify barriers to new technology adoption by incorporating both prospect theory and present bias. We apply the framework in a choice experiment to investigate the relative importance of several factors that shape decisions associated with adoption of low-input turfgrass. We find that loss aversion plays a significant role. Though consumers exhibit present bias, long-term benefits still matter to them. Insights from the behavior model suggest that marketing and government programs that promote cost–benefit-efficient technologies should focus on eliminating or reducing potential losses caused by product failure.
... A large body of literature has focused on the evaluation of water-saving policies from the monetary and nonmonetary perspectives (e.g., Worthington and Hoffman 2008;Fielding et al. 2013;Torres and Carlsson 2018;Goette et al. 2019;Karimlou et al. 2019;Lu et al. 2019). Studies find that raising the price of water is less effective in motivating water conservation due to equity concerns, legal limitations, and inelastic water demand (Scheierling et al. 2006;Kenney et al. 2008;Schleich and Hillenbrand 2009;Schuerhoff et al. 2013;Smith et al. 2017;Drysdale and Hendricks 2018;Siddiquee and Ahamed 2020;Yue et al. 2022). ...
... Wang et al. (2020) see no quantifiable difference in savings between a one day per week restriction and a two day per week restriction. However, individuals are time sensitive and distort precipitation probability in uncertain decisions (Survis and Root 2012;Goette et al. 2019). The previous findings in this area raise the question of how time perception impacts water consumption. ...
As global drought and urbanization raise severe concerns about outdoor water use, restrictions on lawn watering on specific days and/or times have been widely adopted worldwide. However, the literature rarely investigates the impacts of watering restriction lengths on water use behavior. This study investigates the motivation for water conservation by accounting for individuals’ intertemporal time preferences and precipitation probability distortion, which captures bounded rationality. Our findings suggest that a longer restriction length (i.e., allowing a less frequent watering time) may increase the likelihood of immediate irrigation, but this may not be the case for homeowners who prefer immediate rewards and delayed costs; we have labeled these as impatient homeowners. Impatient homeowners are more likely to postpone irrigation if the delayed costs of underwatering (e.g., discolored grass blades, insufficient nutrients to the grassroots, etc.) are more discounted than the costs of overwatering (e.g., a loss of lawn quality, more diseases, excessive thatch, etc.) Additionally, we empirically evaluate homeowners’ time perception and the impacts of the watering restriction on water use. The results show that lengthening restriction intervals (i.e. the time between allowed watering) increases irrigation frequency and water consumption. Based on our results, shortening the watering interval to a prohibited-hours restriction may be more effective in reducing water use by impatient homeowners.
... This is one of the most dominant theoretical frameworks used for designing pro-social incentive programs [1]. Various nudge methods are used; several promising studies that employ socially normative messages use bar charts, emoticons, or other visual aids for resource usage comparisons among individuals [6][7][8][9][10][11]. For example, Opower's Home Energy Report uses bar graphs to compare monthly electricity usage with that of neighbors, emoticons to evaluate usage, line graphs to show trends over the past few months, and tips on resource conservation to save electricity [6]. ...
... As previous studies have shown that changes in water usage vary depending on low or high consumption [8][9][10]15], we classified the households into "low-consuming households" and "high-consuming households" on the basis of their baseline water consumption and analyzed them separately. Generally, as the number of household members increases, water consumption per capita decreases. ...
... The objective of a boost is to foster people's competence in making their own decisions; that is, an intervention to help them exercise their own agency by fostering existing competencies or instilling new ones [25,26]. In the field of water demand management, some studies have provided a series of water-saving tips, such as using low-flow showerheads or running only full loads in the dishwasher and washing machine [9,[27][28][29]. Offering tips about specific actions that may save water (e.g., turn off the bathroom faucets when brushing teeth and shaving, brush teeth with a cup, wash dishes with a filled sink, etc.) can help people choose whether to perform these actions. ...
With the growing need for water demand management, several nudge-based interventions have been undertaken from March to September 2019 to guide humans toward the socially desirable behavior of conserving resources and reducing the negative environmental impacts in the Tokyo Metropolitan area, Japan. In this study, we provided two types of visualized feedback to the participating households by applying social norms to their water consumption: one that conceptualized water as a public good, and one that compared the household’s usage to that of others by using a bar chart for eight months. We analyzed the change in water consumption of each household using the generalized linear mixed model (GLMM) and found that a nudge that visualized water as a public good was effective in saving water in low-consuming households, whereas a nudge using a bar chart had no impact. In addition, we asked the participants whether the information provided caused any kind of stress after the last feedback. An analysis of variance (ANOVA) indicated that the nudge method utilized in this study not only does not cause stress among the nudge recipients, but also improved their interest in residential water consumption. Households that received a nudge were less satisfied than the control group because they feel that they were not able to save water.
... It was proposed by Russell & Knoeri (2020) that one of the most important acts for implementing water conservation is knowing people's adoption behavior and the factors influencing behavior. Water conservation in the context of climate change has been studied by several international researchers (Boyer et al. 2015;Gedefaw et al. 2018;Goette et al. 2019). However, empirical studies on the Vietnamese population are considered quite limited. ...
... Although a range of water conservation strategies has been recommended for climate change, this research follows the study by (2018) on agricultural adaptation, which offered two primary domains for water conservation: technology innovations and farm production practices. Specific strategies are to establish a reservoir to store water (Khastagir & Jayasuriya 2010), reuse water for multiple purposes (Goette et al. 2019); adjusting the time of water use (Kuang et al. 2019), manage the amount of water irrigation (Singh 2020) and reduce the amount of water usage (Aprile & Fiorillo 2017). It should be noted that our study concentrated on water conservation rather than general agricultural strategies, hence we omitted strategies connected to government programs and financial management. ...
... This is completely consistent with the social context of Vietnam in that social capital and political connections have positive and significant relationship (Nguyen-Anh et al. 2021a, b). This suggests that receiving periodic information with water-saving bits of advice, or such a regular reminder through social and political relationships is a possible solution to promote the perception of the maintenance of water as well as provide suggestions on how to conserve water (Goette et al. 2019). ...
The steep parts of Vietnam face more rain, frost, flash flooding, and landslides than the plains and lowlands, making them more vulnerable to disasters and experience severe natural calamities every year. In mountainous areas, water shortages are becoming increasingly problematic as a result of the impacts of climate change and measures to promote water conservation in mountainous areas are more challenging. In an attempt to optimize the environmental advantages of water conservation strategies, it is critical to understand the factors that influence household water consumption decisions. This study aims to focus on assessing the adoption behavior of water conservation among 778 households in 8 mountainous provinces of Vietnam. In this study, the multivariate probit model (MPV) is used to examine the relationship between intrinsic and extrinsic variables and five household water-use activities. The current study looked at the factors that influence the adoption of five different water conservation measures by households and variables related to the cognition of climate change, household characteristics and innate human qualities. The findings of this study reveal positive correlations between intrinsic and extrinsic variables and five household water-use activities. The results suggest that all intrinsic factors had a positive effect on the likelihood of implementing all five water-conserving strategies. However, extrinsic factors such as access to microcredit, rain, and cooperation are all factors that have a detrimental impact on water conservation measures. Based on the outcomes of the MPV model, we may assert that awareness of the effects of climate change is a contributing factor in explaining the adoption of water preservation strategies. The study areas and other similar regions in the country could benefit from a better understanding of the intrinsic and extrinsic characteristics of households to build relevant interventions for water conservation. Future studies are needed to determine how psychological mechanisms of behavior change and how perception of water scarcity affects intention of water usage.
... The growing need for more sustainable water use has inspired various methods for water demand management. Information-based interventions are an effective, non-price-related method of managing demand (Tortajadaa et al., 2019;Lu, 2020;Nemati and Pen, 2020;Abu-Bakar et al., 2021); and numerous types of information have been validated for this purpose, including water-saving tips (Kurz et al., 2005;Schultz et al., 2016;Goette et al., 2019), self-set water saving goals (Novak et al., 2018), social comparison (Brent et al., 2015;Bhanot, 2017;Schultz et al., 2019), and gamification (Erickson et al., 2012;Galli et al., 2015). Most information-based interventions are made possible by electronic and near-real-time usage captures using recently introduced smart water metering. ...
... Sun et al. (2018) indicated that water-saving tips on a refrigerator magnet significantly reduced subsequent water consumption. Goette et al. (2019) reported that receiving periodic information with water-saving tips promoted household water conservation. Kurz et al. (2005) found that attunement labels with tips placed near the point of water use led to significant water savings. ...
... When logRP i takes a value greater than (less than) zero, it signifies an increase (decrease) in water usage compared with the baseline. As previous studies have reported different responses to information-based interventions between high-and low-consumption households (Schultz et al., 2007;Bhanot, 2017;Goette et al., 2019;Otaki et al., 2020), the analysis was divided into high-and low-consumption households, according to baseline water use. It is generally understood that as the number of household members increases, water consumption per capita decreases. ...
Water-saving tips are information-based interventions aimed at managing water demand. Studies of the effectiveness of qualitative water-saving tips to explain why and how water should be saved have not always found significant changes in water consumption. Some studies indicate that the addition of quantitative tips and videos are effective for water conservation. This study adds to the literature by attempting to verify the effectiveness of water-saving tips that visualize the amount of water that can be saved using illustrations of bathtubs. Furthermore, as not all people are interested in water saving, we include tips with a visualized indicator related to the environment, which is of more general interest. These tips used CO2 emissions reductions to demonstrate the effect of water saving. As a result, for high-consumption households, it is more effective to present water-saving tips that present information on how their actions can limit CO2 emissions than to illustrate the reduction in water consumption directly. At the same time, for low-consumption households, none of the tips had neither water-saving nor boomerang effects (i.e., increased the consumption while planning to reduce). Households were divided into high-and low-consumption using baseline water consumption per capita for their household size. The results of this study could serve as a tool for water demand management that can be easily utilized in many parts of the world.
... These messages were adapted from previous literatures. Specifically, message A was from a study of household water conservation conducted in Singapore (Goette et al., 2019). Messages B and C were adapted from research of how households respond to information and monetary incentives involving electricity consumption in India (Sudarshan, 2017). ...
Outdoor water use, especially for lawn and landscaping irrigation, accounts for a substantial proportion of residential water use and often peaks during summer months. Understanding how to reduce outdoor water use can play a critical role in balancing the increasing demand for and subsequent protection of water resources. This study aims to find out if information-based strategies can be effective in reducing homeowners’ water use as well as identifying the key determinants that can enhance water conservation campaigns. Using online survey data from 2077 randomly selected urban homeowners with home lawns in a relatively water-rich state, we found that social norm-based information is generally more effective to promote household water conservation behavior than education information. Moreover, the results showed that the households’ water-saving actions, lawn watering knowledge, awareness for local water scarcity, attitudes toward water conservation, socio-demographics, and landscape characteristics all play a role in determining household water conservation intention.
... 14. A body of literature also exists documenting how usage feedback, peer comparisons, and norm appeals impact residential water conservation (e.g., Ferraro et al., 2011;Ferraro & Price, 2013;Bernedo et al., 2014;Brent et al., 2015;Goette et al., 2019). ...
... 3 Collectively, this body of work highlights that social norms messages induce residential water conservation effects of 3 to 5 percent on average. These effects have been documented in locations throughout the U.S., during both drought and non-drought conditions, and in response to monthly, bi-monthly, and one-time comparisons (Ferraro et al., 2011;Bernedo et al., 2014;Ferraro and Price, 2013;Goette et al., 2019;Bhanot, 2017Bhanot, , 2021Brent et al., 2015. ...
This paper deploys a framed field experiment and uses high-frequency data to evaluate the short- and long-run effects of three behavioral interventions on residential water use during extreme drought. Our study of the effects of Home Water Reports (HWRs) on hourly water use yields three main results. First, even when layered on top of a 25% drought conservation mandate, HWRs led to conservation effects of 4 to 5%. Second, across three variants of HWRs, the profile of water conservation is similar, suggesting that households did not respond to the messaging or recommendations contained in the HWRs. Third, the water conservation effect of all interventions dissipated five months after the intervention ended. In our setting, these behavioral interventions align with utility incentives to achieve immediate but temporary water conservation in response to drought.
... In addition to money, other motivating factors can also be used for recruiting research subjects (Gajic et al., 2012;Goette, Leong & Qian, 2019). Some evidence, however, suggests that financial incentives provide better motivation for participation. ...
... Moreover, the results suggest substantially different short-run and long-run policy impacts produced by moral suasion and economic incentives. On the other hand, Goette et al. (2019) use a field experiment to compare different incentives in motivating water conservation. Different households were given regular feedback, with informative, normative or monetary incentives provided to different groups. ...
The incentives provided to participants are an important aspect in experimental economics. We discuss several aspects of experimental incentives: how they help to recruit subjects; why performance-based incentives can motivate careful decision making, and yet why sometimes experiments without performance-based incentives are also useful; paying for all rounds or only one round in multi-round experiments; paying all subjects or a subset of them; conversion rates of experimental currency to real money; non-monetary incentives; and incentives in field experiments.
... The policy area where incentives are used are mostly waste, energy and water and are often effective compared to control groups and other types of treatment [34,94,95]. This is consistent with other meta-analytic studies that found significant effects of incentives for energy and waste sectors [96,97]. ...
... Results indicate that all treatments positively affect water conservation but non-monetary incentives yielded a larger impact. Another study on household water use found no differences across incentive treatments in Singapore [94]. A positive effect of monetary incentives for behaviour change in recycling and transport was found by Xu et al. [98] and Shove and Walker [99], respectively. ...
... water reduce water use Treat.-Control Goette et al [94]. ...
Many urgent environmental problems can be mitigated with more sustainable use of resources. An acknowledgement of which is a growing interest among policy practitioners in encouraging pro-environmental behaviour change initiatives. In this contribution a review of the existing literature on behavioural change case studies is offered and a categorisation of treatments and guidelines for successful project implementation provided. While most studies relate to energy use and efficiency, the review is not restricted to energy applications to allow insights from other disciplines. The experimental designs considered are treatment-control and before-after studies. Five types of treatments have been considered: education and awareness, outreach and relationship building, social influence, nudges and behavioural insights and incentives, which have been used in experimental studies. In total, 85 primary case studies were collected, many of which tested several treatments, therefore the total number of treatments examined is 155. The analysis finds that the share of success of behaviour change projects related to energy or waste exceeds 70%, while success rate in water-related programmes is about 60%. On balance, the case studies suggest that all types of treatments are suitable but their selection should be based on specific objectives and target population. Interestingly, the choice of the behaviour to change is rarely discussed before project implementation. This analysis also highlights that little is known on whether behaviour change projects achieve sustained pro-environmental behavioural change over time.
