Nudge Me if You Can : Social Nudging to Reduce Water Consumption in Private Households on the Island of Gotland, Sweden

Abstract: This thesis acknowledges the increasingly important issue of global freshwater scarcity. It focuses on water consumption in private households and examines whether social nudging, specifically the focus theory of normative conduct, can serve as a tool to reduce it. This is examined through action research conducted on the island of Gotland, Sweden, in cooperation with the local major housing company GotlandsHem. Despite some limitations, the findings show with a significance of 0.033 that, on average, almost 50 litres of water less were used weekly by each household after two social nudging interventions. This corresponds to 7,472.99 litres for all 151 nudged households. The findings show that the research design represents a way for housing companies to use the focus theory of normative conduct from the field of social nudging to reduce their tenants’ water consumption.