Water Conservation Competitions

Hi Jayne

This sounds quite an inspiring idea...presumably limited to households with water meters? I am checking my contacts for previous examples, but I see some parallels with the Recycling Lottery from Norway. Less than 35 per cent of the population recycled cartons before the start of the lottery. This jumped to between 50 and 60 per cent after its introduction, and it has now increased to about 68 per cent.

Best wishes
Paul White

The Social Marketing Practice
M: 07799 525453
www.socialmarketingpractice.co.uk

I have 4 suggestions:

1) Require registration, prior to the start of the contest period, to win a prize. By doing this you make sure that the prize won't go to someone who wasn't even trying to conserve. For example, this would prevent the winner being a household that was seldom lived in during the year because of a temporary job assignment or an illness.

2) Require the winner(s) to use no more than 50% of the average consumption in Waukesha during the year being measured. Going from 10x average to merely average is a 90% decrease. Without some sort of cap on maximum allowable usage that change might win the contest, but in my opinion it doesn't deserve to.

3) Don't have a handful of big winners. Spread the prizes. Saving water = saving money and is therefore its own reward. Give 100 prizes of one month's free water, not 10 prizes of a year's free water.

4) If your water rates are already tiered so that the more you use, the more you pay per unit, advertise the heck out of that fact. If they are not tiered, or worse yet are set up so that the more you use the less you pay per unit, then change your pricing structure to one that will promote conservation. For a cautionary note on reward programs in general read "Punished by Rewards" by Alfie Kohn before launching your program.

Best Regards,
Bruce Karney

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