Incentives to water conservation: comparing price and reward effects through stated preferences

Focusing on an European institutional context, i.e. Switzerland, we use a stated preference survey approach to elicit the willingness to save water under two alternative incentive policies: a water price increase, and a symbolic prize. In addition, we devise two water scarcity scenarios, a “critical” and a “regular” one and analyze how information on water scarcity moderates the effect of incentives. We show that consumers’ responsiveness to price is comparatively low when the water supply is regular, while it results to be effective mechanisms in the presence of a water shortage. Conversely, the symbolic mechanism is not found to affect consumers’ habits, regardless of what water scenario is considered.