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<p>The Eastern Cape province of South Africa has faced water crisis since 2015 which has recently reached critical levels. Despite interventions by local government in the form of water restrictions and high tariffs, water consumption in the province continues to breach the threshold required for attaining water conservation objectives. Drawing from nudge theory, we conduct a quasi-experiment on the effectiveness of ‘simple picture nudges’ in reducing water consumption in residential buildings in the Humewood surburb of Port Elizabeth. We collect daily data on water consumption of the two buildings over a 6&#xa0;month period (12th April 2023–8th October 2023) and start our intervention on the treatment building on the 7th July 2023. We use Difference-in-Difference (DiD) estimators to evaluate the impact of the intervention on water consumption whilst controlling for time and group effects. Our results indicate that the treatment group decreased daily water consumption by 1.58&#xa0;kL after the invention whilst the control group increased daily usage by 5.83&#xa0;kL thus giving a difference-in-difference effect of − 7.41&#xa0;kL which we find to be cost-effective. Our sensitivity analysis further indicates that the water conserving effects in the treatment building persist over time after the intervention. Considering the residential growth recently experienced in Nelson Mandela Bay Municipality (NMBM), with several of these newly constructed buildings not having any ‘picture nudges’ to encourage water conservation practices, our findings are useful towards local government as they imply that such nudges should be made mandatory in residential buildings.</p>

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A randomized control experiment on the effectiveness of picture nudges on water conservation in Port Elizabeth

  • 期刊论文

  • 出版模式：

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  • 发表日期：

    2026年7月13日

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  • Rasaq Raimi,
  • Andrew Phiri

摘要

The Eastern Cape province of South Africa has faced water crisis since 2015 which has recently reached critical levels. Despite interventions by local government in the form of water restrictions and high tariffs, water consumption in the province continues to breach the threshold required for attaining water conservation objectives. Drawing from nudge theory, we conduct a quasi-experiment on the effectiveness of ‘simple picture nudges’ in reducing water consumption in residential buildings in the Humewood surburb of Port Elizabeth. We collect daily data on water consumption of the two buildings over a 6 month period (12th April 2023–8th October 2023) and start our intervention on the treatment building on the 7th July 2023. We use Difference-in-Difference (DiD) estimators to evaluate the impact of the intervention on water consumption whilst controlling for time and group effects. Our results indicate that the treatment group decreased daily water consumption by 1.58 kL after the invention whilst the control group increased daily usage by 5.83 kL thus giving a difference-in-difference effect of − 7.41 kL which we find to be cost-effective. Our sensitivity analysis further indicates that the water conserving effects in the treatment building persist over time after the intervention. Considering the residential growth recently experienced in Nelson Mandela Bay Municipality (NMBM), with several of these newly constructed buildings not having any ‘picture nudges’ to encourage water conservation practices, our findings are useful towards local government as they imply that such nudges should be made mandatory in residential buildings.