Using nudges for water demand management: A field experiment for water conservation

Abstract

With the growing need for water demand management, several nudge-based interventions have been undertaken from March to September 2019 to guide humans toward the socially desirable behavior of conserving resources and reducing the negative environmental impacts in the Tokyo Metropolitan area, Japan. In this study, we provided two types of visualized feedback to the participating households by applying social norms to their water consumption: one that conceptualized water as a public good, and one that compared the household’s usage to that of others by using a bar chart for eight months. We analyzed the change in water consumption of each household using the generalized linear mixed model (GLMM) and found that a nudge that visualized water as a public good was effective in saving water in low-consuming households, whereas a nudge using a bar chart had no impact. In addition, we asked the participants whether the information provided caused any kind of stress after the last feedback. An analysis of variance (ANOVA) indicated that the nudge method utilized in this study not only does not cause stress among the nudge recipients, but also improved their interest in residential water consumption. Households that received a nudge were less satisfied than the control group because they feel that they were not able to save water.