Saving Water with a Nudge (or Two): Evidence from Costa Rica on the Effectiveness and Limits of Low-Cost Behavioral Interventions on Water Use

The study uses a randomized controlled trial to test the impact of simple, inexpensive, and nonpersonalized behavioral interventions (or “nudges”) on water consumption in the context of a developing country. A descriptive social norm intervention using neighborhood comparisons reduces average water consumption in the first two postintervention months by 4.9 percent relative to the control group, while a planning postcard intervention reduces consumption by 4.8 percent. A descriptive social norm intervention using a town-level comparison also reduces water consumption by 3.2 percent, but this effect is not statistically significant. Finally, the study's one-time interventions continue to generate statistically significant reductions in water use for up to four months after they are implemented.

[1]  B. Cohen.  Urban Growth in Developing Countries: A Review of Current Trends and a Caution Regarding Existing Forecasts , 2004 .

[2]  R. Thaler,et al.  Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness , 2008 .

[3]  Shahzeen Z Attari,et al.  Perceptions of water use , 2014, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

[4]  V. Foster.  Ten years of water service reform in Latin America: toward an Anglo-French model , 2005 .

[5]  Michael K. Price,et al.  Do the Effects of Social Nudges Persist? Theory and Evidence from 38 Natural Field Experiments , 2017 .

[6]  John F. Tomer.  What is Behavioral Economics? , 2005 .

[7]  Katherine L. Milkman,et al.  Using implementation intentions prompts to enhance influenza vaccination rates , 2011, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

[8]  Arnold Michael Muller,et al.  Human Development Report 2006 , 2006 .

[9]  Organización Mundial del Comercio.  World Trade Report 2013 , 2013 .

[10]  K. Watkins.  Human Development Report 2006 - Beyond Scarcity: Power, Poverty and the Global Water Crisis , 2006 .

[11]  Michael K. Price,et al.  Using Nonpecuniary Strategies to Influence Behavior: Evidence from a Large-Scale Field Experiment , 2011, Review of Economics and Statistics.

[12]  Social Norms and Information Diffusion in Water-saving Programs: Evidence from a Randomized Field Experiment in Colombia , 2016 .

[13]  R. Stott,et al.  The World Bank , 2008, Annals of tropical medicine and parasitology.

[14]  Hubbard Jp.  The United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund. , 1950, Pediatrics.

[15]  Joshua D. Angrist,et al.  Mostly Harmless Econometrics: An Empiricist's Companion , 2008 .

[16]  D. Kahneman.  Thinking, Fast and Slow , 2011 .

[17]  H. Allcott,et al.  The Short-Run and Long-Run Effects of Behavioral Interventions: Experimental Evidence from Energy Conservation , 2012 .

[18]  Sendhil Mullainathan,et al.  Behavioral Design: A New Approach to Development Policy , 2014, Review of Income and Wealth.

[19]  S. Mullainathan,et al.  Behavior and Energy Policy , 2010, Science.

[20]  J. Kmenta.  Mostly Harmless Econometrics: An Empiricist's Companion , 2010 .

[21]  Paul J. Ferraro,et al.  The performance of non-experimental designs in the evaluation of environmental programs: A design-replication study using a large-scale randomized experiment as a benchmark , 2014 .