Abstract
Adaptive approaches are required to counteract the mounting threats to water security. Demand management will feature centrally in such adaptations. The increase in the use of smart-meter technology offers an improved way for utilities to gauge consumer demand and to supply consumers with consumption feedback in (near) real time. Such feedback can decrease the discrepancies between perceived and actual water usage. In contrast to the energy sector, however, where the advantages associated with smart-meter consumption feedback are extensively documented, few studies have focused on the usefulness of such feedback when it comes to managing water consumption. This review assesses the evidence base for the effectiveness of water-usage feedback technology in encouraging water conservation. The review highlights the potential value of high-granularity smart-meter feedback technology in managing domestic water consumption. Findings from the papers covered in this review () indicate that feedback was associated with decreases in water use of between 2.5 and 28.6%, with an average of 12.15% (). A single paper reported a 16% increase in consumption associated with smart-meter feedback. The benefits for water utilities are highlighted, but the costs for utilities need to be considered further. Overall, more work is needed to conclusively pinpoint the most effective type of feedback in terms of information content and granularity, frequency of delivery and medium, and how water consumption is linked to energy consumption. This information is needed to make concrete recommendations to the water industry about the costs and benefits of investment in smart metering and consumer feedback.
Get full access to this article
View all available purchase options and get full access to this article.
Acknowledgments
This research received funding from the European Union Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) under the iWIDGET project, Grant Agreement 318272, awarded to the second, fourth, and fifth authors. An earlier version of this paper was published in the conference proceedings of the 2014 Water Distribution Systems Analysis Conference (Sonderlund et al. 2014, Procedia Engineering, 89, 990-997).
References
Abrahamse, W., Steg, L., Vlek, C., and Rothengatter, T. (2005). “A review of intervention studies aimed at household energy conservation.” J. Environ. Psychol., 25(3), 273–291.
Aitken, C. K., McMahon, T. A., Wearing, A. J., and Finlayson, B. L. (1994). “Residential water use: Predicting and reducing consumption.” J. Appl. Soc. Psychol., 24(2), 136–158.
Anda, M., Brennan, J., and Paskett, E. (2013). “Combining smart metering infrastructure and behavioural change for residential water efficiency.” Water, 40(5), 66–72.
Arbues, F., Garcia-Valinas, M. A., and Martinez-Espineira, R. (2003). “Estimation of residential water demand: A state-of-the-art review.” J. Socio-Econ., 32(1), 81–102.
Barrett, G. (2004). “Water conservation: The role of price and regulation in residential water consumption.” Econ. Pap. J. Appl. Econ. Policy, 23(3), 271–285.
Beal, C. D., and Flynn, J. (2015). “Toward the digital water age: Survey and case studies of Australian water utility smart-metering programs.” Utility Policy, 32, 29–37.
Boyle, T., et al. (2013). “Intelligent metering for urban water: A review.” Water, 5(3), 1052–1081.
Britton, T. C., Stewart, R. A., and O’Halloran, K. R. (2013). “Smart metering: Enabler for rapid and effective post meter leakage identification and water loss management.” J. Clean. Prod., 54, 166–176.
Campbell, H. E., Johnson, R. M., and Larson, E. H. (2004). “Prices, devices, people, or rules: The relative effectiveness of policy instruments in water conservation.” Rev. Policy Res., 21(5), 637–662.
Cardell-Oliver, R., Wang, J., and Gigney, H. (2016). “Smart meter analytics to pinpoint opportunities for reducing household water use.” J. Water Resour. Plann. Manage., 04016007.
Dean, A. J., Lindsay, J., Fielding, K. S., and Smith, L. D. (2016). “Fostering water sensitive citizenship-Community profiles of engagement in water-related issues.” Environ. Sci. Policy, 55(1), 238–247.
Duke, J. M., Ehemann, R. W., and Mackenzie, J. (2002). “The distributional effects of water quantity management strategies: A spatial analysis.” Rev. Reg. Stud., 32(1), 19–35.
Erickson, T., Podlaseck, M., Sahu, S., Dai, J. D., Chao, T., and Naphade, M. (2012). “The Dubuque Water Portal: Evaluation of the uptake, use and impact of residential water consumption feedback.” Proc., SIGCHI Conf. on Human Factors in Computing Systems, Association for Computing Machinery, New York.
Espey, M., Espey, J., and Shaw, W. D. (1997). “Price elasticity of residential demand for water: A meta-analysis.” Water Resour. Res., 33(6), 1369–1374.
Evans, R. G., and Sadler, E. J. (2008). “Methods and technologies to improve efficiency of water use.” Water Resour. Res., 44, W00E04.
Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. (2013). “Assessment of demand response and advanced metering.” 〈http://www.ferc.gov/legal/staff-reports/2013/oct-demand-response.pdf〉 (Nov. 01, 2015).
Ferraro, P. J., Miranda, J. J., and Price, M. K. (2011). “The persistence of treatment effects with norm-based policy instruments: Evidence from a randomized environmental policy experiment.” Am. Econ. Rev., 101(3), 318–322.
Ferraro, P. J., and Price, M. K. (2013). “Using nonpecuniary strategies to influence behavior: Evidence from a large-scale field experiment.” Rev. Econ. Stat., 95(1), 64–73.
Fielding, K. S., Spinks, A., Russell, S., McCrea, R., Stewart, R., and Gardner, J. (2013). “An experimental test of voluntary strategies to promote urban water demand management.” J. Environ. Manage., 114(1), 343–351.
Froehlich, J., et al. (2012). “The design and evaluation of prototype eco-feedback displays for fixture-level water usage data.” Proc., Special Interest Group on Computer-Human Interaction (SIGCHI) Conf. on Human Factors in Computing Systems, Association for Computing Machinery, New York, 2367–2376.
Froehlich, J., Findlater, L., and Landay, J. A. (2010). “The design of eco-feedback technology.” Proc., Special Interest Group on Computer-Human Interaction (SIGCHI) Conf. on Human Factors in Computing Systems, Association for Computing Machinery, New York, 1999–2008.
Gans, W., Alberini, A., and Longo, A. (2013). “Smart meter devices and the effect of feedback on residential electricity consumption: Evidence from a natural experiment in Northern Ireland.” Energy Econ., 36(9885), 729–743.
Geller, E. S., Erickson, J. B., and Buttram, B. A. (1983). “Attempts to promote residential water conservation with educational, behavioral and engineering strategies.” Popul. Environ., 6(2), 96–112.
Ghimire, M., Boyer, T. A., Chung, C., and Moss, J. Q. (2015). “Estimation of residential water demand under uniform volumetric water pricing.” J. Water Resour. Plann. Manage., 04015054.
Giurco, D. P., White, S. B., and Stewart, R. A. (2010). “Smart metering and water end-use data: Conservation benefits and privacy risks.” Water, 2(3), 461–467.
Grafton, R. Q., Kompas, T., To, H., and Ward, M. (2009). “Residential water consumption: A cross country analysis.” Crawford School of Economics and Government, Australian National Univ., Canberra, Australia.
Hoffmann, M., Worthington, A., and Higgs, H. (2006). “Urban water demand with fixed volumetric charging in a large municipality: The case of Brisbane, Australia.” Aust. J. Agric. Resour. Econ., 50(3), 347–359.
Houde, S., Todd, A., Sudarshan, A., Flora, J. A., and Armel, K. C. (2013). “Real-time feedback and electricity consumption: A field experiment assessing the potential for savings and persistence.” Energy J., 34(1), 87–102.
Jeong, S. H., Gulbinas, R., Jain, R. K., and Taylor, J. E. (2014). “The impact of combined water and energy consumption eco-feedback on conservation.” Energy Build., 80, 114–119.
Kappel, K., and Grechenig, T. (2009). “Show-me: Water consumption at a glance to promote water conservation in the shower.” Proc., 4th Int. Conf. on Persuasive Technology, Association for Computing Machinery, New York.
Kenney, D. S., Goemans, C., Klein, R., Lowrey, J., and Reidy, K. (2008). “Residential water demand management: Lessons from Aurora, Colorado.” J. Am. Water Resour. Assoc., 44(1), 192–207.
Kurz, T., Donaghue, N., and Walker, I. (2005). “Utilizing a social-ecological framework to promote water and energy conservation: A field experiment.” J. Appl. Soc. Psychol., 35(6), 1281–1300.
Kuznetsov, S., and Paulos, E. (2010). “UpStream: Motivating water conservation with low-cost water flow sensing and persuasive displays.” Proc., Special Interest Group on Computer-Human Interaction (SIGCHI) Conf. on Human Factors in Computing Systems, Association for Computing Machinery, New York, 1851–1860.
Lima, C. A. F., and Navas, J. R. P. (2012). “Smart metering and systems to support a conscious use of water and electricity.” Energy, 45(1), 528–540.
Liu, A., Giurco, D., and Mukheibir, P. (2016). “Urban water conservation through customised water and end-use information.” J. Clean. Prod., 112(4), 3164–3175.
Liu, T.-K., Sheu, H.-Y., and Tseng, C.-N. (2013). “Environmental impact assessment of seawater desalination plant under the framework of integrated coastal management.” Desalination, 326(4), 10–18.
Ockenden, K. (2014). A smart move for water, Utility Week, West Sussex.
Olmstead, S. M., and Stavins, R. N. (2007). “Managing water demand: Price vs. non-price conservation programs.” Pioneer Institute for Public Policy Research, Boston.
Oracle. (2009). “Smart metering for water utilities.” 〈www.oracle.com/us/industries/utilities/046596.pdf〉.
Petersen, J. E., Frantz, C. M., Shammin, M. R., Yanisch, T. M., Tincknell, E., and Myers, N. (2015). “Electricity and water conservation on college and university campuses in response to national competitions among dormitories: Quantifying relationships between behavior, conservation strategies and psychological metrics.” PLOS ONE, 10(12), e0144070.
Petersen, J. E., Shunturov, V., Janda, K., Platt, G., and Weinberger, K. (2007). “Dormitory residents reduce electricity consumption when exposed to real-time visual feedback and incentives.” Int. J. Sustainab. Higher Educ., 8(1), 16–33.
Saghir, J. (2008). “Water resources: Improving services for the poor.” International Development Association, Washington, DC.
Schultz, P., Nolan, J., Cialdini, R., Goldstein, N., and Griskevicius, V. (2007). “The constructive, destructive, and reconstructive power of social norms.” Psychol. Sci., 18(5), 429–434.
Schultz, P. W., Messina, A., Tronu, G., Limas, E. F., Gupta, R., and Estrada, M. (2016). “Personalized normative feedback and the moderating role of personal norms a field experiment to reduce residential water consumption.” Environ. Behav., 48(5), 686–710.
Sonderlund, A. L., Smith, J. R., Hutton, C., and Kapelan, Z. (2014). “Using smart meters for household water consumption feedback: Knowns and unknowns.” Proc. Eng., 89, 990–997.
Steg, L. (2008). “Promoting household energy conservation.” Energy Policy, 36(12), 4449–4453.
Stewart, R. A., Willis, R. M., Panuwatwanich, K. and Sahin, O. (2013). “Showering behavioural rseponse to alarming visual display monitors: Longitudinal mixed methods study.” Behav. Inf. Technol., 32(7), 695–711.
Strengers, Y. (2011). “Negotiating everyday life: The role of energy and water consumption feedback.” J. Consum. Culture, 11(3), 319–338.
Tasic, V., Staake, T., Stiefmeier, T., Tiefenbeck, V., Fleisch, E., and Troster, G. (2012). “Self-powered water meter for direct feedback.” Proc., 3rd Int. Conf. on the Internet of Things, Association for Information Systems Electronic Library, 24–30.
Tasic, V., Tiefenbeck, V., Schöb, S., and Staake, T. (2015). “Short-term spark or sustained impact? Investigating the long-term effect of real-time feedback.” 〈http://aisel.aisnet.org/ecis2015_rip/35〉 (Apr. 15, 2016).
Tiefenbeck, V., Staake, T., Roth, K., and Sachs, O. (2013). “For better or for worse? Empirical evidence of moral licensing in a behavioral energy conservation campaign.” Energy Policy, 57, 160–171.
Van den Bergh, J. C. J. M. (2008). “Environmental regulation of households: An empirical review of economic and psychological factors.” Ecol. Econ., 66(4), 559–574.
Vine, D., Buys, L., and Morris, P. (2013). “The effectiveness of energy feedback for conservation and peak demand: A literature review.” Open J. Energy Efficiency, 2(1), 7–15.
Wessex Water. (2013). “Towards sustainable water charging.” Bath, U.K.
Willis, R. M., Stewart, R. A., Panuwatwanich, K., Jones, S., and Kyriakides, A. (2010). “Alarming visual display monitors affecting shower end use water and energy conservation in Australian residential households.” Resour. Conserv. Recycl., 54(12), 1117–1127.
Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Journal of Water Resources Planning and Management
Volume 142 • Issue 12 • December 2016
Copyright
© 2016 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Nov 16, 2015
Accepted: May 24, 2016
Published online: Jul 25, 2016
Published in print: Dec 1, 2016
Discussion open until: Dec 25, 2016
Authors
Metrics & Citations
Metrics
Citations
Download citation
If you have the appropriate software installed, you can download article citation data to the citation manager of your choice. Simply select your manager software from the list below and click Download.