How Managers Can Reduce Household Water Use Through Communication: A Field Experiment

Abstract

As populations increase and droughts intensify, water providers are using tools such as persuasive messaging to decrease residential water use. However, district-led messaging campaigns are rarely informed by psychological science, evaluated for effectiveness, or strategically disseminated. In collaboration with a water district, we report a field experiment among single-family households using persuasive messaging based on the information-motivation-behavioral skills model (IMB). We randomly assigned 10,000 households to receive different mailings and measured household water use. All messaging reduced water consumption relative to the control. On average, water use dropped 0.68 hundred cubic feet (HCF) (509 gallons) per household in the first month. Had all 10,000 single-family, occupied, non-agricultural residences been mailed the IMB messaging, more than five million gallons would have been saved in the first month. The effects declined but persisted for approximately three months and were three to six times greater in households with high water use (75th to 90th percentiles) relative to average water use. These findings suggest that combining message elements from the IMB model can reduce residential water use and that targeting high-use households is particularly cost-effective.

Ego or Eco? Neither Ecological nor Egoistic Appeals of Persuasive Climate Change Messages Impacted Pro-Environmental Behavior

“…Lastly, some of the present findings are based on participants' self-reported PEB, and self-reported PEB often differs from objective measures [19]. Future studies may examine the impact of egoistic and egocentric messages on objective indicators of people's PEB, such as the water consumption of households [30].…”

Four Europes: Climate change beliefs and attitudes predict behavior and policy preferences using a latent class analysis on 23 countries

“…Second, we encourage segmentation studies in lower-income countries, which are underrepresented in the current literature despite their importance in global emissions (e.g., China); see (Leiserowitz et al, 2013) for results in India. Third, we recommend experimental trials of framed messages across different classes, for example using pro-environmental intentions or behavior as outcomes (Hodges et al, 2020;Sapiains et al, 2016). Such studies would constitute a strong test of claims, like ours, that segmentation studies usefully inform targeted messaging in pro-environmental context as they have for health behaviors (Brick et al, 2016;Gallagher & Updegraff, 2012).…”

Four Europes: Climate change beliefs and attitudes predict behavior and policy preferences using a latent class analysis on 23 countries

“…Second, we encourage segmentation studies in lower-income countries, which are underrepresented in the current literature despite their importance in global emissions (e.g., China); see (Leiserowitz et al, 2013) for results in India. Third, we recommend experimental trials of framed messages across different classes, for example using pro-environmental intentions or behavior as outcomes (Hodges et al, 2020;Sapiains et al, 2016). Such studies would constitute a severe test of claims, like ours, that segmentation studies usefully inform targeted messaging in pro-environmental context as they have for health behaviors (Brick et al, 2016;Gallagher & Updegraff, 2012).…”