Tapping Water into Your Heart: Promoting Water Conservation through its Uniqueness Compared to its Scarcity strengthened by the individuals’ personal values in communicational strategies
Estefanya Charlotte Vazquez Casaubon (CJS)
Supervisor
Prof. dr. Verolien Cauberghe (CJS)
Co-supervisor
Prof. dr. Dieneke Van de Sompel (CEPEC)
Water is central to human activity and wellness; nevertheless, freshwater is a limited resource forecasted to be promptly scarce - worldwide- due to climate change, population growth and current consumption behaviours. Conjointly, individuals from Western European countries exhibit misperceptions relative to water, considering it as an unlimited resource, and therefore as a common good. The former counteracting the urgency to mitigate water shortage.
Although different strategies have successfully stimulated water conservation, the effects do not prevail in the long-term or outside experimental context. Suggesting that the motivation to conserve water is not a central driver of the individuals’ behaviours but as a consequence of extrinsic stimuli (i.e. nudges and financial incentives).
The current project aims to study underlying mechanisms that could backfire or facilitate the promotion of sustainable water usage transforming the intrinsic value we attach to it.