Residential water conservation during drought: Experimental evidence from three behavioral interventions

Katrina Jessoe, Gabriel E. Lade, Frank Loge and Edward Spang

Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, 2021, vol. 110, issue C

Abstract: This paper deploys a framed field experiment and uses high-frequency data to evaluate the short- and long-run effects of three behavioral interventions on residential water use during extreme drought. Our study of the effects of Home Water Reports (HWRs) on hourly water use yields three main results. First, even when layered on top of a 25% drought conservation mandate, HWRs led to conservation effects of 4 to 5%. Second, across three variants of HWRs, the profile of water conservation is similar, suggesting that households did not respond to the messaging or recommendations contained in the HWRs. Third, the water conservation effect of all interventions dissipated five months after the intervention ended. In our setting, these behavioral interventions align with utility incentives to achieve immediate but temporary water conservation in response to drought.

Keywords: Social norms; Water use; Long-run effects; Randomized controlled trial; High-frequency data (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0095069621000851
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

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:eee:jeeman:v:110:y:2021:i:c:s0095069621000851

DOI: 10.1016/j.jeem.2021.102519

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Environmental Economics and Management is currently edited by M.A. Cole, A. Lange, D.J. Phaneuf, D. Popp, M.J. Roberts, M.D. Smith, C. Timmins, Q. Weninger and A.J. Yates

More articles in Journal of Environmental Economics and Management from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().