Session: DFMLC-07-01/DTM-06-01: Design for Sustainable Product Use, User Behavior

Paper Number: 70670

Start Time: August 19, 02:10 PM

70670 - Reducing Waste Outflow to Motivate Water Conservation 

Resource-consumption systems can be defined by a resource inlet, a control volume where the resource is used, and a waste outlet. Specific to water, many existing conservation strategies focus on reducing the in-flow of water into a control volume. Instead, this work explores reducing waste out-flow, which causes accumulation in the control volume. This strategy aims to motivate users to reduce resource in-flow in response to accumulation in the control volume, and thus modify behavior.

To test this strategy, Amazon Mechanical Turk workers completed online, three randomly ordered handwashing simulations with different sink outflow rates. Participants (N=74) significantly reduced consumption of water when it accumulated quickly in the sink (p<0.0001). Participants reduced water consumption, on average by 14% at lower outflow rates, as they decreased inflow rates to prevent sink overflow.

Many pro-environmental behavior interventions are limited in that they rely on user motivation and intention to reduce resource consumption. In contrast, the reduced-outflow intervention significantly reduced water consumption of people regardless of reported daily pro-environmental behavior (p<0.001). This result suggests that the intervention developed relies less on user intention. Overall results support that reducing outflow can increase sustainable user behavior when properly executed. In-person testing is discussed as future work.

Presenting Author: Sarah Halabieh University of Toronto

Authors:

S. Halabieh University of Toronto
L.H. Shu University Of Toronto