Socio-psychological determinants of Iranian rural households' adoption of water consumption curtailment behaviors

Abstract

Dealing with a growing population and a shortage of drinking water is a major challenge for politicians and planners. A key factor in ensuring a sustainable water supply is water conservation at the household level, which can increase productivity and save water resources. Therefore, promoting water consumption curtailment behavior will contribute significantly to reducing the global water crisis, especially in arid and semi-arid regions. Water consumption curtailment behaviors depend on individuals’ encouragement to choose and adopt voluntary behaviors and cannot be enforced by any political or planning power. In order to encourage water conservation those social and psychological factors should be considered that influence individuals to participate or adopt water consumption curtailment behaviors. Therefore, the study of factors influencing rural households' water consumption curtailment behaviors is of great importance. This study aimed to describe the socio-psychological factors influencing water consumption curtailment behaviors among rural households in southwestern Iran. The extended theory of planned behavior (ETPB) was used as a theoretical framework in this study along with descriptive norms (DN), moral norms (MN), habits, and justification. Data were collected using a questionnaire and analyzed using structural equation modeling (SEM). The results showed that ETPB can explain 35% and 54% of intention and water consumption curtailment behaviors among rural households in Iran. Our findings may assist policymakers in reducing domestic water consumption.

Application of the extended theory of planned behavior in predicting the behavioral intentions of Iranian local communities toward forest conservation

“…The results indicated that the model used in the context of behavioral intentions towards forest protection was very successful and unique, because the figure of variance explained by extended TPB was 78.7%. In the analysis of this result, it can be said that using the TPB model in the field of forest protection compared to the results of other studies on different issues such as food waste ( Soorani and Ahmadvand, 2019 ), organic agriculture ( Yazdanpanah and Forouzani, 2015 ), water saving ( Savari et al, 2022a ), etc. has been more successful because the amount of explained variance in present study is higher than them.…”

“…has been more successful because the amount of explained variance in present study is higher than them. Another importance of TPB in investigating forest conservation behavior was that all its variables became significant while in many studies on other fields ( Yazdanpanah and Forouzani, 2015 ; Soorani and Ahmadvand, 2019 ; Savari et al, 2022a ) all the variables were not significant, which indicates the good fit of the TPB model in explaining the behavioral intention of forest protection. The findings of this study provide new insights for policy makers to protect the environment and natural resources.…”

“…The finding of this section indicates that individual’s behavior is influenced by different people in the society, and as a result of their influence or pressure, a behavior is performed or not. In other words, a person bases his intention on the basis of others’ wishes ( Savari et al, 2022a ), because SN refers to perceived social pressure to engage or not engage in a behavior ( Liang et al, 2018 ). Therefore, if the behavior of forest protection is accepted by people with higher social position, it is also effective in the implementation of protection behavior by other individuals ( Savari et al, 2022b ).…”

“…Researchers always state that environmental conditions such as economic factors can affect the probability of using a certain behavior ( Mehri et al, 2011 ). However, environmental factors are not able to create a sustainable behavior in the environment, but psychological factors can be more useful in this regard ( Savari et al, 2022a ). Based on this, it can be said that a higher level of psychological factors such as PBC among indigenous people can probably lead to forest preservation behavior.…”

Explaining the ranchers’ behavior of rangeland conservation in western Iran

“…The use of social-psychological models and theories is one of the most important methods for studying conservation behavior and its preventive factors ( Turaga et al, 2010 ; Yazdanpanah et al, 2015 ; Savari and Gharechaee, 2020 ; Karimi and Saghaleini, 2021 ; Savari et al, 2022c ). Environmental psychological studies are important because they show that sustainable behavior in the environment requires individuals to internalize norms and behaviors, as incentives and constraints cannot produce sustainable manners in them ( Savari et al, 2022d ).…”