1,721,027 research outputs found
The performance of practice: an alternative approach to attitudinal and behavioural ‘customer segmentation’ for the UK water industry
Full text linkDeveloping a comprehensive picture of the nature of current water demand is vital to forecasts of future water demand, as well as to inform demand management interventions and water efficiency programs. One way that water companies in the UK are starting to develop this picture is through the use of proxy variables such as demographics that are then used to segment people to explain patterns in people’s water use based on values, attitudes, and behaviours. However, as is the case with many environmental management settings, this current approach to attitudinal or behavioural segmentation fails to take into account the constantly observed value/attitude behaviour gap in water use, and offers little to the idea of intervention beyond a simple provision of technology and information to similarly ‘averaged’ customers. This paper offers an alternative theoretical and methodological perspective to the idea of segmentation based on depth of understanding of everyday practice, and highlights how a change of the unit of analysis from ‘individuals’ to ‘practices’ opens up a wealth of possibility for understanding water demand, and conceptualising forecasting and intervention for the water industry
New directions in understanding household water demand: a practices perspective
Full text linkUnderstanding the nature of current household water use is important for forecasting future demand and for designing effective water efficiency interventions. This paper argues that to develop this understanding further it is necessary to shift away from the current focus on sociodemographic characteristics as predictors of litres used towards the everyday practices of household members through which water is consumed, i.e. routine and often habitual activities such as watering the garden, showering and clothes washing. It presents selected results from a survey of water using practices undertaken in southern England in 2011, focusing on garden watering as an example which demonstrates some of the added understanding that such a “practices approach” brings to how water is being used. These serve to illustrate that how individuals water the garden varies, often with little relationship to their sociodemographic characteristics. Further results demonstrate too that how individuals perform different practices varies with little relationship between the practices, so that even a set of households with similar levels of daily per capita water use can be using it in widely different ways. We end with some examples of how this understanding could help in demand forecasting and in designing more effective approaches to interventions
Patterns of water: the water related practices of households in southern England, and their influence on water consumption and demand management
Full text linkThis report contains the findings of survey research on the patterns of water using practices in households across the South and South East of England. Following a ‘practice based’ approach to water demand, this research takes practices as the unit of analysis when exploring water use – rather than attitudes, behaviours or simply ‘litres used’ – and highlights how this changed unit of analysis allows for a deeper understanding of the routines and habits of everyday life that lead to domestic water consumption – washing and personal hygiene, doing the laundry, gardening, cooking etc. Based on an 1800 person survey across the south and south east of England, and a range of descriptive and cluster analysis, this research highlights the diversity of dynamics shaping domestic water demand in the UK and may help bring new insights into how to construct interventions, and into the future trajectories of different practices and levels of water consumption
Practices by proxy: climate, consumption and water
No full textDomestic water-using practices are embedded within wide and complex systems at all levels of scale, from the micro (individuals, technologies) through the meso (neighbourhoods, families, locales and distributed networks and systems) to the macro (infrastructures of provision, regulation and systems of normative values). Yet current domestic water demand modelling tends to focus solely on household composition and price. In the context of future UK population growth, of potentially uncertain rainfall volumes and cycles and of increasingly carbon and cash intensive treatment costs a more nuanced approach to water demand modelling is crucial to the water-using and water-producing sector's response to climate change. This paper explores a novel approach to the exploration of the complex inter-relationships between water use, water infrastructures and climatic variation in UK households. We do this not by observing water 'demand' per se but by using consumption expenditures as proxies for metered water demand and for water uses and by then linking them, through the Expenditure and Food Survey/Living Costs and Food Survey, to regional climatic variation from 2002 to 2009. The results show not only how water use, everyday consumption practices and climatic variation are inter-twinned but they also reinforce the argument that to understand current and future water use we need to consider far more than price, demographics and utilitarian conceptions of value
Seven core issues for water demand management under climate change and uncertainty: Reflection on practice and sociological approaches
No full textPatterns of Water: Resource Pack
Full text linkThis is a resource pack that we have put together from the cluster analysis results of a survey, and qualitative interviews, conducted across the south and south east of England exploring practices using water in the home and garden. We are happy for you to use this resource pack in policy, business, and teaching however please reference as: Browne, A.L., Pullinger, M., Medd, W., & Ander-son, B. (2013). Patterns of Water: Resource pack. Lancaster University, Lancaster, UK. More infor-mation can be found in our final report (Pullinger et al 2013) or email Dr Alison Browne [email protected]
Patterns of practice: a reflection on the development of quantitative methodologies reflecting everyday life related to water demand and consumption in the United Kingdom
Full text linkThere is a growing body of research arguing the relevance of practice approaches to understand resource consumption, and to highlight alternative pathways to sustainability. These practice approaches offer an alternative conceptualisation of demand and have been demonstrated largely by qualitative research, particularly in the work on water and energy consumption in the home. However, these historical narratives and qualitative research have not, to date, lead to the development of quantitative or mixed methodologies that could potentially reflect the diversity of performances of practice across populations in a more systematic way. This paper reflects, critically, on one such attempt to scale a practice based perspective into a quantitative survey on water consumption and practice in homes in the south and south east of England. The use of quantitative and mixed methodology has substantial potential – from translating practice based research to policy; developing indictors to track patterns of practices as they change over time; and the exploration of methodologies that reflect the bundling and coordination of practices associated with water use inside and outside the home. The benefits and utility of such a methodological approach are highlighted, as are cautions and future research directions
Patterns of water: resource pack
Full text linkThis is a resource pack that we have put together from the cluster analysis results of a survey, and qualitative interviews, conducted across the south and south east of England exploring practices using water in the home and garden
Developing novel approaches to tracking domestic water demand under uncertainty - A reflection on the "up scaling" of social science approaches in the United Kingdom
Full text linkClimate change, socio-demographic change and changing patterns of ordinary consumption are creating new and unpredictable pressures on urban water resources in the UK. While demand management is currently offered as a first option for managing supply/demand deficit, the uncertainties around demand and its' potential trajectories are problematic. In this paper we review the ways in which particular branches of social science offer a model of 'distributed demand' that helps explain these current and future uncertainties. We also identify a few potential strategies for tracking where the drivers of change for demand may lie. Rather than suggesting an alternative 'demand forecasting' technique we propose alternative methodological approaches that 'stretch out' and 'scale up' measures of demand to inform water resources planning and policy. These proxy measurements could act as 'indictors of change' to water demand at a population level that could then be used to inform research and policy strategies. We conclude by arguing for the need to recognise the co-production of demand futures and supply trajectories
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