Beyond the Margin: Targeted Conservation and Household Water Demand

Non-price interventions targeting specific household water uses are increasingly central to conservation policy, but whether end-use savings translate into lower aggregate demand remains unresolved. This paper reports evidence from a pre-registered field experiment in which 775 Finnish households were randomized to a shower timer, a water-saving shower head, or the same shower head with real-time feedback. Utility-grade water meters measure household-level effects, while shower-level data provide complementary end-use evidence for the two shower-head treatments. The shower timer has no detectable effect. In contrast, the water-saving shower head reduces daily household demand by about 5%, and pairing it with real-time feedback doubles this reduction to about 10%. The convergence between shower- and meter-based estimates shows that end-use savings largely pass through to aggregate demand rather than being offset elsewhere in the home. Cost-benefit analysis indicates that combining technological constraint with salient point-of-use feedback dominates reminder-based strategies.