EVERY DROP COUNTS: A WATER CONSERVATION EXPERIMENT WITH HOTEL GUESTS

Hailey Hayeon Joo, Jungmin Lee and Sangkon Park

Economic Inquiry, 2018, vol. 56, issue 3, 1788-1808

Abstract: We implement a field experiment with hotel guests to measure the effects of nonprice interventions on water conservation and customer satisfaction. In hotels, guests have no direct pecuniary incentive to conserve water, as consumers do at home, where they pay their own water bills. Because hotels earn greater profits when they manage to convince guests to conserve, guests may be suspicious of a hotel's stated social goal of water conservation. By implementing behavioral interventions that address these challenges, we find that our nudges can induce guests to reduce their water consumption, even when no direct monetary incentive is provided. Using post‐stay customer surveys, we detected no adverse effects on customer satisfaction due to these nudges. (JEL D12, I31, Q41, Q50)

Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/ecin.12563

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bla:ecinqu:v:56:y:2018:i:3:p:1788-1808

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://ordering.onl ... s.aspx?ref=1465-7295

Access Statistics for this article

Economic Inquiry is currently edited by Tim Salmon

More articles in Economic Inquiry from Western Economic Association International Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().