Whose view do we use? Comparing expert water professional and lay householder perspectives on water-saving behaviours

ABSTRACT

Applying behavioural science to complex issues, like water demand management, requires behaviour prioritisation for focused program design. This requires tools and data to support decision-making. Some sectors obtain expert-derived data to fill gaps for statistical modelling. However, there is an ongoing debate over use of expert, versus lay, stakeholder perspectives. We extend previous research by examining perceptions held by expert water professionals (n = 44), and lay householder (n = 151) stakeholders, regarding household water-saving behaviours and barriers to participation. We find consistency between expert and lay perceptions on behavioural participation rates and impact on water saving, but less agreement on the effort required for behaviour adoption. Such inconsistency on perceptions of effort could have implications for behaviour selection and intervention design. Our findings suggest that expert-derived data could be used for behaviour prioritisation, but lay input is valuable when everyday (curtailment) or maintenance type water-saving behaviours are under consideration.

KEYWORDS:

• Behaviour perspectives
• expert vs. lay
• water saving
• behaviour change

Acknowledgements

This research was funded by the Cooperative Research Centre for Water Sensitive Cities, Commonwealth of Australia. The authors confirm that the data supporting the findings of this study are available within the article and its supplementary materials.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed here.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Cooperative Research Centre for Water Sensitive Cities, Commonwealth of Australia.