Outdoing the Joneses: Understanding community acceptance of an alternative water supply scheme and sustainable urban design

Exploring social and cultural norms to promote ecologically sensitive residential garden design

“…We argue that the apparent attitudinal differences between participants in newer housing estates (Dzidic & Green, 2012) compared to participants in the current study may be due to different cultural ideologies. Therefore, while social norms appear to operate in both the current study and the work by Dzidic and Green, the norms themselves are different, reflecting the ideologies that are explicit to the participants' cultural and physical context within their neighbourhood and broader suburb.…”

“…In contrast, previous research has shown that Perth homeowners in residential housing estates on the urban fringes were reluctant to engage water saving and more generally proenvironmental behaviours, because they did not see the utility of a small individual effort in bringing about collective benefit (Dzidic & Green, 2012). Dzidic and Green also found residents believed that the government was responsible for creating proenvironmental behaviour changes.…”

“…It is interesting to note that participants were seen to compete with others in having the most ecologically friendly garden. Dzidic and Green (2012) reported the residents of new housing estates found rain water tanks and solar panels to be aesthetically displeasing. Fremantle residents, however, described installing water tanks despite little practical function, as well as often engaging in native gardening only in places that were visible to the street.…”

“…Further deconstruction of the drivers illustrated that social and cultural values, in this case embedded in notions of community and pro-environmental behaviour, establishes a context in which social processes such as the activation of descriptive and injunctive norms will operate. Therefore while it is evident that similar processes, particularly in relation to social comparison, othering and social norms appears to occur across diverse neighbourhoods in WA (for example see Dzidic & Green, 2012), how these processes manifest will be dependent on the existing culture of that community. This observation has powerful implications, as knowledge of the underlying cultural values and customs of a community could inform the design strategies or programmes adopted within a community, particularly in relation to environmental initiatives.…”

Review on water leakage control in distribution networks and the associated environmental benefits

“…Although the effects of water leakage control on water savings (Sun and Chen, 2012) and energy reduction for sustainable urban development (Dzidic and Green, 2012) have been appreciated, a precise quantification is still lacking. It is important to use life cycle analyses to establish a method to parameterize these values so as to persuade the policy makers and the public to invest in water leakage control.…”