Challenges of Researching Showering Routines: From the Individual to the Socio-Material

Abstract

In the UK, water supplies are under pressure from climate, population and lifestyle change. Showering is the largest component of domestic water consumption. Young adults are high water-users at a transitional life-stage, when practices are dynamic, and habits shaped. This paper presents the methodology, early findings and reflections on challenges of working with different data types and scales, to explore real-world water-saving through a mixed-methods approach, focusing on showering patterns of first year university students in campus accommodation at the University of the West of England, Bristol, UK. Combining household meter, logged water-fixture micro-component, personal-use questionnaire, user diary and stakeholder focus group data with the Scottish Government Individual-Social-Material model, typical showering demand reduction interventions were evaluated and insights into alternative interventions were generated. Results indicate Estates’ routine equipment maintenance and database management affect data quality and consistency. Despite these issues a profile of daily student water use was derived (equivalent to 114 litres per person per day) but with high variability between different households (from 83 to 151 litres per person per day). Average shower durations (self-reported 10–12 minutes) were higher than reported UK norms, although frequency was similar to the UK daily shower norm. Average measured shower volumes (51 litres in one house) were not excessive, indicating shower fixtures provided a contribution to water saving.

Romanian Students’ Environment-Related Routines during COVID-19 Home Confinement: Water, Plastic, and Paper Consumption

“…Therefore, universities wanting to adopt a greening strategy for campus life need to focus on developing awareness campaigns, which, in accordance with the findings of other studies [10,13,50,51,68,78], is crucial to the success of implementing sustainable consumption habits. Universities alone cannot implement extensive greening measures without coordinating their efforts with the utility services providers (water services, waste services, etc.)…”

“…These campaigns could also be carried out by involving the university management to identify some technical measures to optimize water consumption on campus (water faucet timers, economical shower heads, dual toilet tanks, etc.) and the dormitory management to help implement these solutions [50]. Another possibility is to introduce disciplines or new chapters in the existing curricula that target sustainable development.…”

“…Narrowing down the investigation to the students' showering routines, British researchers highlighted the impact that administrative measures and persuasive campaigns had on the water consumption in Bristol [50], but the specificity of the local context makes it difficult to replicate the research in a different cultural and administrative context. The gap in researching students' awareness of their water consumption habits, their attitudes toward saving water, or the issue of water management was highlighted in the scientific literature [51].…”

Promoting water conservation habits in shower use: review of water utility websites in OECD cities

“…In a UK-led national study, 32% of a sample of nearly 160,000 persons using EST's Water Energy Calculator reported an average shower length of 7.8 minutes (The Water Energy Calculator is an online tool that helps households in the UK understand the energy associated with water use in their home, and identify opportunities to manage their consumption and bills.) In the study by Simpson et al (2019), university students in campus accommodations in Bristol, UK, reported an average shower duration of 10-12 minutes, higher than reported UK norms.…”

Opening the Black Box of Water Conservation Behavior: Holistic Perspective of a Developing Country

“…A household water audit is used to assess the water usage behavior of respondents and how much water they are saving at home (Addo et al, 2018). By conducting a water audit (Master and Gandhi, 2017;Khedikar, 2011); (Gagnon, 1984), researchers estimate the water used in dishwashing, cloth washing, bathing (Kulkarni et al, 2014), showering (Simpson et al, 2019), car washing, flushing (Kubade et al, 2017), and in yards.…”