Water demand management: Interventions to reduce household water use

Urban Sociology and Community Studies;Decision Making;Urban Design

Fielding, Kelly ; Spinks, Anneliese ; Russell, Sally ; Mankad, Aditi ; McCrea, Rod ; Gardner, John

Urban Water Security Research Alliance (UWSRA)

RP-ID  :  EP129378

学科分类：地球科学(综合)

澳大利亚|英语

来源: CSIRO Research Publications Repository

【 摘 要 】

This paper reports on a study of household water use, which trialled three different interventions designed to reduce consumption. Two hundred and twenty-one households in South East Queensland were divided into four groups–three different intervention types and one control group–and their ongoing daily water consumption was monitored before, during and after the intervention. •In the information only condition, households received general advice about how they could save water. •In the descriptive norm condition, households received information about water saving along with information about the numbers of other “low water use households” that used these same behaviours. •In the water end-use feedback condition, households received water saving tips along with tailored specific information about where water was being used in their own household. The impact of the interventions (relative to the control group) were investigated with respect to changes in daily water use over time, the relative cost effectiveness of each intervention as a water-saving measure, the changes in individual end use over time, and changes in psychographic measures over time. Some of these analyses were hampered by reduced sample sizes, which resulted from households dropping out of the study over time – this may have been largely due to the flooding that occurred in the study region in January 2011, after the intervention had concluded, but whilst long-term data collection was still underway.Effects of interventions on daily water useLongitudinal modelling showed that that the three interventions all resulted in significant reductions in household water consumption (relative to the control condition), and that these reductions were not meaningfully different across the three intervention types. These results support the contention that behaviourally-based interventions can contribute to reductions in water consumption. However, we have found no clear evidence to distinguish the effects of one type of intervention from another (although we expected them to operate differently). Further, the water savings which result from these interventions all dissipated over time, with peak water savings at about four months after the end of the intervention, and a return to pre-intervention levels after about a year.Cost effectiveness of interventionsIf the cost of water use instrumentation is included from the calculations for all interventions, the end-use feedback condition was the most cost-effective, although the information only condition was fairly similar. If instrumentation costs are excluded, the information-only condition shows the best cost-effectiveness. Whether it is better to exclude or include instrumentation costs depends on a number of factors: whether multiple different interventions are being trialled, whether daily water use data is required, and what changes may be made in the “typical” instrumentation available in households in the future.Effect of interventions on end useResults showed that in the control condition, there were no statistically significant changes in appliance usage over time. In the combined interventions condition, there were significant reductions over time in water used by showers, clothes washers and dishwashers, with the first two demonstrating the largest reductions. Whilst all other appliances showed reductions in usage over time, these reductions were not statistically significant.