Abstract
Water efficiency campaigns in England and Wales currently focus on private domestic customers and private businesses and usually focus on either the implementation of technological devices, financial incentives or educational programs for school children. This brief research report focuses on the public sector (schools, hospital, universities, local government), an underexplored area for investigating the role of social norms in facilitating water saving. It takes the approach that the public sector provides so far untapped potential for water savings and asks how water saving behavior can be changed. Based on a review of academic, grey literature, documents and a workshop with stakeholders from water companies, regulators and public sector organizations, nine key themes are presented and discussed. The themes, which can also be understood as recommendations, emphasize that water saving behavior is influenced not just by individual decisions, but social and psychological drivers such as social norms, values or group behavior. For example, water saving competitions among different departments, embedding water into the bigger environmental story or the question of who delivers the water saving message may contribute to changing water saving behavior at the workplace1. The public sector is well placed to implement water efficiency programs involving social norms and could act as role model for other sectors.
Highlights
Water efficiency is a cornerstone of water resources management and public water supply
The grey literature, i.e., studies, or reports from policy-makers and environmental management professionals, included documents from key actors in the UK drought and water scarcity governance space (Lange and Cook, 2015). This included: Waterwise–a UK non-governmental organization concerned with water efficiency, Ofwat–the economic regulator of the privatized water supply system in England and Wales, the UK Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), the English Environment Agency (EA) and other regulatory bodies, for example Natural Resources Wales (NRW), as well as English and Welsh water companies’ Water Resources Management Plans (WRMP) for the years 2014–2019 and some draft WRMPs for the planning period
In order to gather ideas and data about water efficiency and the public sector from sources as widely as possible a scoping exercise was undertaken to look at water efficiency campaigns in California, Australia and South Africa, countries which are more experienced with drought and water scarcity
Summary
Water efficiency is a cornerstone of water resources management and public water supply. Existing water efficiency campaigns focus on two key drivers of water saving behavior: technological devices such as water meters and financial incentives but leave unexplored the potential of social norms to create behavioral commitments to water saving. This brief research report focusses on the role of social norms for encouraging water saving behavior in the English and Welsh public sector. Cotton et al (2016) focus on energy saving but the study included questions on water saving as well It is the purpose of this article to provide concrete recommendations for water efficiency campaigns in the public sector. Public sector organizations provide significant untapped potential for water saving by virtue of their size and/
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