Household Adoption of Water-Efficient Equipment: The Role of Socio-Economic Factors, Environmental Attitudes and Policy

Using unique survey data of 10,000 households from 10 OECD countries, we identify the driving factors of household adoption of water-efficient equipment by estimating Probit models of a household's probability to invest in such equipment. The results indicate that the adoption of water-efficient equipment is the most strongly affected by ownership status, by being metered and charged a volumetric charge on water consumption, and by behavioural factors. Environmental attitudes are strong predictors of adoption of water-efficient equipment, with a marginal effect that exceeds ownership status in some cases. In terms of policy, we find that households that were both metered and charged for their water individually had a much higher probability to invest in water-efficient equipment compared to households that were not charged for their water.attitudes, metering, residential water use