The challenge
The combined effects of climate change and a rising population mean that water will become an increasingly scarce resource over the coming decades. Trends towards warmer, drier weather make droughts more likely, even while extreme weather events increase the risk of flooding. Moreover these patterns are likely to be particularly apparent in regions where populations densities are highest, such as the South East of England.
Meeting a growing requirement for water by extracting more from the environment is damaging and expensive, especially in regions where resources are stressed to begin with.
Managing demand for water, however, offers valuable opportunities to safeguard supplies, and all water companies have committed to take action to reduce their customers’ water consumption.
Our client, a water company, had already implemented a demand management programme which involved numerous projects aimed at delivering its commitment to reduce customers’ water consumption. However they wanted to go further, and strengthen their use of behavioural science to optimise these projects, understand their customers better and design and target future projects to be as effective as possible.
What we did
We worked in close collaboration with the demand management team and other stakeholders to deliver five workstreams that culminated in the design of new interventions to reduce water use. First, we conducted a comprehensive review of how behavioural insight was already being used within the current programme. This review produced a framework which identified opportunities to optimise current initiatives, and highlighted desirable behaviours which were not yet targeted. Alongside this we undertook a review of existing evidence on customer water-use behaviours.
We then produced an evidence register comprised of internal data sources and relevant published academic literature, and case studies with examples of effective interventions from the review. A third workstream produced an evaluation toolkit, providing guidance and recommendations on how to evaluate the impacts of behaviour change initiatives. These initial phases established a foundation for primary research and designing new interventions for behaviour change.
We then conducted primary research with the company’s customers to gain deeper insight into their water usage behaviours. This involved an online survey (n=3,000) of the key customer segments, and a range of qualitative studies including focus groups, water use diaries and in-home ethnographic observation. This research identified barriers and enablers to reducing water wastage for each customer group, and allowed us to calculate the potential impact for a range of water-saving behaviours.
Finally we used these calculations to identify priority behaviours to target – those that would deliver the greatest savings in water while being easiest for customers to implement.
What we found
The target behaviours included using ‘eco’ mode when running the dishwasher or washing machine: customers found it hard to imagine that this long-lasting setting would use less energy and water than a standard or rapid cycle; and they were not used to planning their schedules to incorporate the longer time needed. To tackle these barriers we developed a collection of stickers which could be attached to the appliance, together with explanations of how they would be effective using the COM-B model. We created prototypes of these stickers and other interventions, and developed these further through additional qualitative testing with customers.
Our final outputs combined findings from all workstreams, including a toolkit of interventions that the company could implement, and approaches for monitoring and evaluating future behaviour change programmes.
.svg)
Back
