“I conserve more water than others, do I?" An exploratory study examining self-assessment misperceptions of water conservation

Estefanya Charlotte Vazquez-Casaubon (), Veroline Cauberghe and Dieneke Van de Sompel
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Estefanya Charlotte Vazquez-Casaubon: Ghent University
Veroline Cauberghe: Ghent University
Dieneke Van de Sompel: Ghent University

Environment, Development and Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development, 2024, vol. 26, issue 3, No 68, 7303-7317

Abstract: Abstract Water resources are under pressure, which poses serious challenges for our society. Persuading individuals to conserve water is difficult, especially when they have the impression that they already conserve water. This is identified as the cognitive bias of self-assessment, where a lack of information can lead to misperceiving one’s performance. This means that people misperceive their actual performance and have the self-perception of behaving “good enough”, or “better” than others while this is not the case. This paper explores the magnitude of these misperceptions, their impact on water conservation intentions and linkages to personal and situational factors. An online survey (n = 1013) explored whether individuals under-/over-/correctly estimated their own water conservation performance in comparison with others and examines if personality traits (i.e. intentions to conserve water, moral obligation to conserve water, personal values) and situational factors (i.e. social influence, exposure to media content) can explain the tendency of the individuals’ misperceptions of their self-assessment. The results revealed that people do have misperceptions about water conservation (with at least half of the sample misperceiving to perform better or even worse than the norm). Results also demonstrated that a combination of personal and situational factors is related to the incorrect self-assessment of water conservation performance. The work reveals tendencies and potential explanations for misperceptions, but also potential barriers to promote water conservation.

Keywords: Pro-environmental behaviour; Cognitive bias of self-assessment; Biospheric values; Moral obligation; Water conservation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
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DOI: 10.1007/s10668-023-03009-2

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