On February 18, 2015 at 06:33PM, Tom at Watery Foundation published the following article:
A water conservation campaign in Boston gave residents weekly feedback on water use. Researchers, in comparing those water users with a control group, found that residents with the water conservation tips reduced their water use. Yay!!! Now the not-so-good part: this group of water conservers simultaneously increased their energy use.
Moral licensing was at work. That is when “people can call to mind previous instances of their own socially desirable or morally laudable behaviors,’ making them ‘more comfortable taking actions that could be seen as socially undesirable or morally questionable.” (p. 162). Efforts to implement direct change can be surprisingly counterproductive. Other approaches can be less prone to those reversals. For example, if a state adopts more efficient plumbing standards, water use by those devices is likely to be permanently reduced. If a fee is put on every thousand gallons of water, the price signal tends also to have a durable effect.
Our individual human minds strongly resist change. It could be wiser to focus more on changing policy and less on individual behavior. Like in the photo at the top of the page. The purpose of yesterday’s Clean Water Rally at the state Capitol was to influence the policy for implementing Amendment 1. That is a great way to change policy for many years to come.
Read this article from Watery Foundation at http://www.wateryfoundation.com/?p=11179.
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