Automated Enforcement of Irrigation Regulations and Social Pressure for Water Conservation

Jeremy West, Robert Fairlie, Bryan Pratt and Liam Rose

Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, 2021, vol. 8, issue 6, 1179 - 1207

Abstract: This study evaluates two interventions for residential water conservation. Comparing households across an enforcement algorithm’s cutoff using a regression discontinuity design, we find that automated irrigation violation warnings cause substantial water conservation but also shift some consumption from regulated to unregulated hours within the week. In contrast, we show using data from a randomized experiment with the same customers that normative home water reports reduce water use by a much smaller amount, but that this social pressure is effective during all hours both before and after automating irrigation policy enforcement. Our findings highlight the merits of implementing multidimensional conservation programs.

Date: 2021
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/715472 (application/pdf)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/715472 (text/html)
Access to the online full text or PDF requires a subscription.

Related works:
Working Paper: Automated Enforcement of Irrigation Regulations and Social Pressure for Water Conservation (2021)
Working Paper: Automated Enforcement of Irrigation Regulations and Social Pressure for Water Conservation (2021)
Working Paper: Automated Enforcement of Irrigation Regulations and Social Pressure for Water Conservation (2021)
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:ucp:jaerec:doi:10.1086/715472

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists from University of Chicago Press
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Journals Division ().