Water conservation behaviour: evidence from Kuwait

ABSTRACT

The paper reports analysis of data from a household survey concerning water conservation behaviour in Kuwait. Econometric models were used for nine conservation measures, The models were estimated for nationals and expatriates. The results revealed that households made efforts to conserve water by changing habits/practices. The results failed to support the theory of planned behaviour as water conservation campaign had no effect on households’ water conservation. Awareness about environment and water conservation did not result in pro-conservation behaviour.

KEYWORDS:

• Conservation
• behaviour
• households
• socio-economic
• environmental

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank to thank all the survey participants; and also the journal editor and the anonymous referee for their valuable comments.

Authorship statement

Nadeem Burney is responsible for the study design and data collection supervision. Nadeem Burney and Ahmad Alawadhi are responsible for data analysis, econometric estimation and writing of the manuscript. The other authors worked on data collection, validation and descriptive analysis of the data.

Disclosure statement

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

Notes

1. For a complete description of TPB, see Ajzen [26].

2. See for example Abdulrazzak et al. [27] and Alazmi et al. [28].

3. Residential consumers are charged a flat rate of 800 fils per thousand imperial gallons (4.55 cubic metres, a subsidy of over 75% of the cost of supplying water). From 1966 to 2017, the water prices remained unchanged for all consumers. Since 2018, the tariff was changed to 2 Kuwaiti Dinar (2000 fils) for expatriates and unchanged for nationals.

4. Although the initial intention of the Chow test was to be used for linear regression [29], it has been extended to Probit, Logit, Poisson, negative binomial, and each part of a TPM [23].

Additional information

Funding

This work is based on a study that was partially supported by the Foundation for the Advancement of Sciences (KFAS) under Grant: [2010-1112-02].