Water efficiency engagement in the UK: barriers and opportunities

Future water security is a growing concern throughout the world. In the UK, this concern is particularly concentrated in south-east England where water scarcity is exacerbated by population increase, high household usage, and low rainfall due to climate change. Traditional technical interventions to ensure water supply are proving insufficient to meet the public’s water needs and water utilities’ contemporary activities to encourage people to reduce their usage have been cast by industry and academia as difficult to deliver. In response to these challenges, this thesis aimed to increase the understanding of barriers and opportunities to improve water efficiency activities in areas facing water scarcity. This was achieved through developing and refining an analytical framework called the ‘MAC (Message, Audience, Channel) heuristic for understanding water efficiency engagement.’

Drawing on existing literature about communication theory and water efficiency, the nature of the message, the anticipated audience, and the channel of communication were identified as three vital components through which communications about water efficiency could be studied. The MAC heuristic was thus developed to: (1) explore the intended audiences and processes for water efficiency engagement in UK utilities operating in areas of serious water stress, (2) identify the factors that aid or stifle water efficiency engagement in a seriously water-stressed utility, and (3) to further the concept of water efficiency engagement and support practice in the field.

The MAC heuristic supported this research, both the systematic analysis of Water Resources Management Plans developed by UK water utilities operating in areas of serious water stress (Phase 1) and the case study of water efficiency home visits in Essex & Suffolk Water, a seriously water-stressed utility (Phase 2).
The study of plans for water efficiency engagement in seriously water-stressed areas indicated that central government policy was the main driver for utilities to consider household water efficiency as a key strand of water demand management. These utilities’ target audience for water efficiency engagement were customers with whom they had functional relationships such as bill-payers and meter owners and they intended to motivate water efficiency heavily using metering and retrofitting and by promising them the intrinsic or extrinsic benefits of protecting water resources or reducing water bills, respectively. However, the utilities’ plans for water efficiency education were less robust and their understanding of customers was based on sociodemographic characteristics, with limited knowledge of their sociocultural characteristics or household materiality.

The case study revealed that in practice, water efficiency engagement was motivated by local environmental events and related circumstances. Specifically, the water efficiency home visit campaign in Essex & Suffolk Water was initiated due to the occurrence of droughts and flatlined water savings from retrofitting. The research findings showed that whilst employing technically skilled plumbers was beneficial for retrofitting functions, and collating installation data during home visits advanced the understanding of measured water savings, the main factors that stifled water efficiency engagement during the campaign were: (1) mis-selling of home visits as an opportunity for customers to obtain freebies from the utility, (2) insufficient preparation for water efficiency education including the plumbers’ knowledge deficit in water efficiency education and limited soft skills, and (3) the absence of effective feedback mechanisms between the plumbers and the water managers. These barriers meant that some customers lost trust in the utility, the plumbers’ engagement strategy required improvement, customers were not better understood by the water managers following the home visits, and practice improvement was stifled.

Overall, the thesis contributes to sustainable water management by advancing the conceptual understanding of water efficiency engagement and aiding water managers to think creatively about water efficiency engagement by proffering ways to improve practice in the field. It presents opportunities for socio-technical change that can be achieved through the reimagination of water efficiency engagement as a complex of measures to address the interconnected factors such as norms, values, socioeconomic conditions, institutions, resources, environment, technology, and water systems that produce household water usage. And part of this socio-technical change includes increasing training and upskilling of plumbers as a key communication channel and custodian of insight about customers and creating a learning culture between the plumbers and the water managers to enhance water efficiency engagement.