Becoming FEW Conscious: A Conceptual Typology of Household Behavior Change Interventions Targeting the Food-Energy-Water (FEW) Nexus

Holly Berman, Rachael Shwom and Cara Cuite
Additional contact information
Holly Berman: Bloustein School of Planning & Public Policy, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ 08854, USA
Rachael Shwom: Department of Human Ecology, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ 08854, USA
Cara Cuite: Department of Human Ecology, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ 08854, USA

Sustainability, 2019, vol. 11, issue 18, 1-24

Abstract: The food-energy-water (FEW) nexus presents an opportunity to rethink predominant approaches to household behavior change science. We linked emerging FEW nexus research with existing literature examining household consumption and pro-environmental behaviors. While a large body of work examines the environmental impacts of household life and explores pathways to behavior change for sustainability, the literature lacks studies that test interventions in multiple FEW resource categories, leaving researchers unable to identify tensions and tradeoffs in the household system. To guide this developing field and accumulate findings on household behavior across disciplines, we proposed a conceptual typology that synthesizes interdisciplinary analytic traditions to classify behavioral interventions targeting the household FEW nexus. The typology synthesizes behavioral interventions as active, passive, or structural, and household-specific or non-specific, illustrating six distinct categories: information, tailored information, action, gamification, policy/price change, and material/technology provision. A review of 40 studies that guided the typology identifies four significant lessons for future intervention research: household non-specific information and tailored information work better together, feedback is more effective when it is persistent, price-based interventions (information or incentives) are often ineffective, and material/technology provision is very effective but utilized in few household studies. To push forward household resource consumption science, we advocated for a holistic nexus focus that is rooted in interdisciplinarity, coalition building with stakeholders, and data reporting that facilitates knowledge accumulation.

Keywords: climate change mitigation; household consumption; food-energy-water nexus; pro-environmental behavior (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/11/18/5034/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/11/18/5034/ (text/html)

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:gam:jsusta:v:11:y:2019:i:18:p:5034-:d:267273

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().