Reducing household water consumption: a social marketing approach

Abstract

There is increasing pressure for society to move towards more sustainable use of its resources, and calls in the literature have been made to reassess marketing's role in achieving such goals.This research examines how key behavioural factors influence household water use, in the context of a social marketing programme to reduce household water consumption. A model of the key drivers of household water consumption is developed and tested using a sample of 909 households in a regional city in Australia. The findings from this study support the model developed and show that in the absence of price as a rationing mechanism, the social marketing programme significantly reduces household water consumption. This is the first study to develop a comprehensive and empirically tested model of the nonAprice drivers of household water consumption, within the context of a social marketing intervention. The findings make a contribution to the field of consumer behaviour and social marketing by illustrating key behavioural drivers of water consumption.Consequently the study also shows how marketers can assist in preserving essential goods and services such as water.

Changing Food Consumption Behaviors

“…This shows that retailers can nudge consumers to make healthier food choices through providing food samples. By implication, this points to the growing need to evaluate baskets of foods that individuals choose rather than individual products (Balcombe, Fraser, Lowe, & Souza‐Monteiro, ; Lowe, Souza‐Monteiro, & Fraser, , Lowe, Fraser, & Souza‐Monteiro ).…”

Social marketing: the state of play and brokering the way forward

“…Social marketing has also expanded beyond a core focus and applications in public health (see French, Blair-Stevens, McVey, & Merritt, 2009;Harvey, 1999;Mannoff, 1985) to tackling social issues such as climate change and sustainability (McKenzie-Mohr, 2011), energy efficiency (Kennedy, Parker, Scott, & Rowlands, 2000;Russell-Bennett, Mulcahy, McAndrew, Swinton, & Little, 2016), reducing water consumption (Lowe, Lynch, & Lowe, 2015), public transport use (Cooper, 2007), citizen engagement (Bhattacharya & Elsbach, 2002), domestic violence (Manikam & Russell-Bennett, 2016) and gambling (Messerlian & Derevensky, 2006), disaster preparedness and response (Marshall et al, 2007), ecosystem and species conservation (Jenks, Vaughan, & Butler, 2010) and government corruption (Kindra & Stapenhurst, 1998). This work has helped shape social marketing to develop as an approach that can be effective, efficient, sustainable and just in advancing people's well-being and social welfare (Lefebvre, 2012).…”

Commentary

“…A consumer's perception of costs plays an important role in the determination of perceived fairness and subsequent behaviour (Bearden, Carlson, and Hardesty, 2003;Campbell, 1999;Taylor, 1985) through the principle of Dual Entitlement (Kahneman, Knetsch, and Thaler, 1986) and transparency can lead to reciprocated behaviour (Lowe, Lynch and Lowe, 2015).…”