Abstract
The increasing world population and climate change are major concerns for the supply of water needs. Understanding user behavior facilitates the development of effective strategies of domestic water management. This research applied a questionnaire survey and data analysis methods to analyze the water consumption behavior of tenants in a multicultural urban area, dominated by immigrants of different ethnic origins, in the city of Växjö in Sweden. Results showed that the majority of the studied participants perceived themselves to be environmentally friendly. They reported to be engaged in water conservation activities quite often, but analysis showed that they did not have accurate perceptions of their water consumption. Positive attitudes towards water conservation and self-reported water conservation activities significantly but negatively influenced respondents’ actual water consumption, i.e., water consumption was higher. Subjective norms did not have a significant influence. The results also revealed that individual measurement and debit positively influenced, i.e., reduced, actual water consumption. Therefore, water management systems should include an individual measurement and debit system combined with a visualization system to enable tenants to monitor the quantity and cost of their water consumption.
Highlights
Sustainable water management is one of humanity’s top ten challenges for the 50 years [1], especially in the context of urban sustainability [2]
The path coefficient (PC) for the path from individual measurement and debit (IMD) to actual water consumption was negative, which means that an inSustainability 2021, 13, 8603 crease in IMD entailed a decrease in actual water consumption
IMDframework entailed a decrease in iable, this paper added an extra parameter to the model, i.e., IMD, and applied the theoactual water consumption
Summary
Sustainable water management is one of humanity’s top ten challenges for the 50 years [1], especially in the context of urban sustainability [2]. Climate change and increasing population are known as major causes of imbalances in the supply and demand in urban water systems [3]. Water demand increases with increases in temperature [4], while the water supply might decline because of climate change [3]. Increased population and increasing quality of life have increased water demand by six-fold over the past 100 years [8]. Reduction of water demand has been considered an important section of water management programs [9,10]
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