The effect of culture on domestic water saving
Guolunan Yang, Masahiro Sato
Abstract
Saving domestic water has become one of the most important policy targets in addressing the increasing shortage of fresh water worldwide. Culture plays a significant role in people's behaviors including how they tend to use water at home. This study aims to explore the effect of culture on domestic water saving. To capture the multi-dimensional roles of culture in individuals' decision-making process, we model their water-saving behaviors by incorporating both local cultural values and cultural ecosystem services that is, both the moral and benefit aspects of culture, into a hypothetical framework combining the theory of planned behavior and Value-Belief-Norm theory. Local cultural values and the value of cultural ecosystem services are quantified by a questionnaire survey conducted in Jinan City, China, and then performing the contingent valuation method on its results. By estimating the partial least squares structural equation model, we found: introducing cultural ecosystem services improves the explanatory power of culture in domestic water saving; local cultural values and cultural ecosystem services promote domestic water saving through perceived behavioral control; local cultural values have a stronger influence on domestic water saving than cultural ecosystem services. • Exploring how culture affects domestic water saving from moral and benefit aspects. • Introducing CES to improve the ability of culture measurement. • Local cultural values and CES affect domestic water saving by PBC. • Local cultural values have a stronger effect than CES on water-saving behavior. • Personal norm is the most influential variable to predict water-saving intention.