Conserving Water While Washing Hands: The Immediate and Durable Impacts of Descriptive Norms

As water scarcity problems will probably increase over the next decade, it is important to explore ways to reduce water consumption in everyday individual behaviors. In line with previous field research, we aimed to show in a laboratory setting that descriptive norms could effectively influence water reduction actions. Moreover, because the impact of such actions would be valuable if repeated over time, we investigated whether the effect of descriptive norms interventions can last for at least a week. We conducted three studies using two messages targeting different ways to achieve a reduction in water consumption (i.e., closing the tap and using as little water as possible) for hand washing. We provide additional empirical evidence that descriptive norms are effective in increasing water conservation actions and that this influence remains for at least a week.