Motivating household water conservation: A field experiment in Singapore

Göette, Lorenz; Leong, Ching; Qian, Neng

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0211891

Cited by 46 publications

(33 citation statements)

References 21 publications

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“…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 [16,46,105]. This is consistent with other meta-analytic studies that found significant effects of incentives for energy and waste sectors [27,57].…”

Section: Incentivessupporting

confidence: 83%

Encouraging pro-environmental behaviours: A review of methods and approaches

Grilli

Curtis

2021

Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews

135

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Many urgent environmental problems can be mitigated with more sustainable use of resource. An acknowledgement of which is a growing interest among policy practitioners in encouraging pro-environmental behaviour change initiatives. The effect of anthropic pressure on the environment is long known and the first pro-environmental behaviour studies date back to the middle 1970s. Despite this, the scientific literature has not yet answered several questions: what are the most suitable ways to encourage behavioural changes? What are the barriers to project implementation? What are the long run effects of behavioural change projects? With this in mind, this contribution offers a review of the existing literature on behavioural change case studies and provides a categorisation of treatments and guidelines for successful project implementation. Five different approaches have been considered: education and awareness, social influence, relationship building, incentives and nudges, which have been used in experimental studies. On balance the case studies suggest that all approaches 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.

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Section: Incentivessupporting

confidence: 83%

Encouraging pro-environmental behaviours: A review of methods and approaches

Grilli

Curtis

2021

Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews

135

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“…Working with the Public Utilities Board (PUB, a statutory board under MEWR), scholars from the National University of Singapore recently conducted a field experiment to assess the effectiveness of various forms of information on water conservation. Over 1 month, the researchers periodically placed door hangers representing different treatment conditions on the main entrance of more than 900 households (Goette et al, 2019). There were two different kinds of information presented: water conservation tips that were framed as a campaign and normative feedback (i.e., household usage and efficient use benchmarks).…”

Section: Nudging In the Domain Of The Environmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Nudging in Singapore: Current Implementation in Three Key Areas

Detenber

2021

Journal of Asian Economic Integration

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The city state of Singapore has a long history of social engineering efforts, yet only recently have social scientists and civil servants started to use behavioural insights (BI) to create ‘nudges’ and integrate them into the daily lives of citizens. Colloquially known as a nanny state for its extensive social programmes and sometimes heavy-handed approach to guiding social behaviour, Singapore is often regarded favourably by its neighbours in terms of its cleanliness, efficiency, and productivity. Yet how it manages its populace and the restrictions it imposes on unwanted behaviours are sometimes viewed sceptically by others in Asia and the West. Thus, many in the Singapore Civil Service have come to see nudging as a less coercive way to promote social welfare and well-being. This article reviews some of the latest actions in three areas: finance, health, and the environment. In discussing the range of nudging practices, their effectiveness will be assessed and some of the implications for society and individuals will be addressed. To the extent that Singapore can be considered a bellwether or harbinger, its use of nudges may offer a glimpse of what lies ahead for other countries in the region.

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“…For example, previous studies have shown that employees who have received letters about their expected pensions save more for retirement in Germany (Dolls et al 2018), but not in the U.S. (Carter and Skimmyhorn 2018). In the context of water use, the effect of providing conservation tips varies widely across studies, from 1% (Ferraro and Price 2013) up to 2 to 5% (Goette et al 2019, Tonke 2020). Even more drastically, studies on information provision to conserve energy have found effect sizes ranging from less than −10 to about 8% (see e.g.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Information Campaigns for Residential Energy Conservation

Andor¹,

Gerster²

2021

AEA Randomized Controlled Trials

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This paper evaluates an intervention that randomized information letters about energy efficient investments and behaviors among 120,000 customers of two utilities in Germany. We find that conservation effects differ considerably between both utilities, ranging from a precisely estimated zero effect to 1.4%. By contrast, we do not detect significant framing effects from presenting savings in monetary or ecological terms. Based on random causal forest methods, we show that the effect heterogeneity across utilities cannot be explained by socio-demographic characteristics. Our results demonstrate the importance of site-specific factors for the effectiveness of information campaigns, which has crucial implications for targeting and the ability to infer population-wide effect sizes from pilot studies.

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Motivating household water conservation: A field experiment in Singapore

Cited by 46 publications

References 21 publications

Encouraging pro-environmental behaviours: A review of methods and approaches

Encouraging pro-environmental behaviours: A review of methods and approaches

Nudging in Singapore: Current Implementation in Three Key Areas

Information Campaigns for Residential Energy Conservation

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