Attitudes towards water conservation: Evidence from households in Germany

Based on randomized information treatments that were embedded in a large online survey among more than 6,000 single-home owners from Germany, we investigate the malleability of attitudes towards water conservation and a variety of conservation policies. While the empirical results indicate that, generally, respondents have a positive attitude towards water conservation, this positive attitude is merely slightly lowered by information treatments that included either nuanced or negatively biased information about the necessity of water conservation. In addition, we find that respondents attribute a higher level of concern for water conservation to themselves than to both people in their personal environment and the population in general. Conservation policies, such as education campaigns, price increases for heavy consumers and comparison reports on water consumption are accepted by the majority of respondents and perceived as fair, whereas smart water tariffs and frequent price increases are largely rejected.