Understanding Water Consumption in Sydney

This paper explores the extent to which attitudes to conservation and reduced water use in and around the home may affect the water saving behaviour of households in different kinds of housing in Sydney in a period when restrictions and price rises have become the principle methods to reduce consumption in the city. The research uses a household survey and focus groups to identify the attitudes of consumers to water consumption. The former involved a telephone interview survey that generated information about the consumption behaviour of a sample of households across Sydney, their dwellings, their socio-economic profile, and the range of equipment and facilities they use. The latter involved conducting five focus groups drawn from the areas included in the survey and explored attitudes and behavioural aspects in more depth. The paper argues that water conservation policy needs to understand the complexity of water demand, stemming from the different socio-demographic profiles of households living in different housing forms (high and low rise). Dwelling form in turn structures a range of physical and institutional barriers to better water use, as well as conditioning the cultural, behavioural and attitudinal aspects of water consumption that affect and shape individual and community responses to public initiatives to reduce consumption or to provide alternative water supplies. Introduction With Sydney having undergone its third hottest summer on record in 2005/6 and a return to drought condition across much of NSW in mid-2006 (Sydney Morning Herald, 23 May 2006), the pressure remains high on finding a solution to Sydney’s water supply problems. A substantial literature has been generated both in the industry and in the media on how this issue can be best tackled. There is no shortage of proposed technological ‘fixes’ for this ‘problem’: by increasing supply at the macro scale through major desalination plants, constructing more dams, tapping underground water supplies, recycling waste water, and at the micro or domestic scale by installing water tanks. There is also a plethora of initiatives to reduce consumption by using water efficient fittings within the home and by encouraging changes in garden practices. Some of these are now enshrined in the BASIX framework in NSW, introduced in 2005, under which new and renovated dwellings are required to comply to higher levels of water conservation standards through the installation of, for example, dual flush toilets, low flow shower heads, rain water tanks and low water consumption gardens, to reduce household water consumption (BASIX 2007). More generally, there is increasing public concern over the ecological sustainability of Australian cities (Commonwealth of Australia 2005) reflected in increasing attention being paid to issues of global climate change and to the way water resources are exploited. Debate on these issues focuses on aggregate measures of energy and water consumption and the technical or economic aspects of maintaining supply of these resources. While this is a useful level of debate when trying to negotiate international agreements or develop urban planning interventions, it has little purchase on the consumption behaviour of individuals and households that are the prime sources of the stresses we create in the natural systems on which our cities depend (Head, et al, 2005; Head and Muir, 2006). This paper attempts to go beyond the ‘macro’ level objectives and explore the water consumption behaviour of individuals and households that make up Sydney. The predominant feature of Australian housing provision has been the separate house on its own block of land (Troy 1991). This form of housing development is one that Mullins (1981a, 1981b and 1995) has demonstrated was important in the domestic production and consumption that was revealed in the high standard of living enjoyed by Australians in the late 19 and early 20 centuries. ISBN 978-0-646-48194-4 SOAC 2007 900 The significance of the garden as a major focus of household activity and production (Gaynor 2006) was also underscored by the highly influential ‘garden city’ ideal that drove town planning policies and thus the form of Australian Cities for much of the last century (Freestone 2000). Other research has focussed on social distinction and conformity to explain apparently high levels of water consumption on household gardens (Askew and McGuirk 2004) and on the importance of gardens as places where people engage with nature (Head et al 2005, Head and Muir 2006). The socio demographic, behavioural, institutional, and cultural factors that appear to influence the propensity to maintain gardens and thereby affect water consumption have been argued by (Duruz 1994, Holmes 1999, Hutchings 2003, Johnson 1994, Allon and Sofoulis 2006, Sofoulis 2005)). These socio-demographic considerations supplement exploration of economic factors such as income and physical factors such as temperature and rainfall that have been used to ‘explain’ the levels of water consumption (Aitken et al 1991, Dandy 1987, Eardley et al 2005, Espey et al 1997, Turner et al 2005, White et al 2003). The difficulties and limitations of educational campaigns and the dissemination of knowledge in changing behaviour (Sofoulis 2005, Barr 2003), together with the impact of consumerism on water consumption through the daily routines and perceptions of entitlement, also point to the complexity of factors that affect water consumption (Trentman and Taylor 2006). A limitation of many studies is that they tend to use estimated national or State averages of water consumption which have the effect of obscuring important elements of the assumptions underlying socio-cultural influences on consumption. Socio-demographic approaches have also ignored the impact that different forms of housing may have on the propensities of households to use water, and the effect different forms of housing may have on their attitudes and perceptions of water use. This issue is becoming more important as Australian cities are transformed through the impact of compact cities policies and development pressures (Bunker, et al 2006). However, there is no simple ‘read-off’ between expressed opinions on the environmental matters and actual conservation behaviour. Ungar (1994) contends that ‘the environment is a domain in which attitudes do not predict behaviours very well. Soufoulis (2005) (and others, e.g. Shove 2003) goes beyond the limitations of opinion polling identified by Ungar to point out that consumption is directly influenced by socio-technical considerations which may not change quickly or evenly. Residents may not be able to change their behaviour rapidly because of the path dependencies created by the water supply and waste disposal systems they have available to them. These dependencies are often reinforced by the institutional structures (and cultures established in them) created to provide the services. In this paper we take this position further by arguing that the type of housing consumers live in, specifically the density of the dwelling form (high rise or low rise), the tenure of those dwellings (rental or owned) and the water using facilities they provide, together with their life style position and profile, will all impact on an individual household’s capacity to respond to water saving. This in turn will be reflected in general attitudes and behaviour to water conservation. This is a result of both physical and technical aspects of housing form and ownership, as well as the socio-demographic profile of households in different form of housing. Study Background: The research reported here follows earlier studies including a pilot study of water and energy consumption in Adelaide (Troy and Holloway 2004, Troy et al 2003) and research on the spatial water consumption profile of the Sydney metropolitan area (Troy, et al, 2005). The latter study constructed an ‘account’ of local water consumption patterns from a stratified sample of 29,000 dwellings using Sydney Water consumer records, to create a profile of water consumption for households and individuals in different kinds of dwellings throughout the Sydney metropolitan area. This paper extends the research on Sydney’s water consumption patterns through an exploration of the impact that socio-economic, attitudinal and behavioural factors may have on water consumption across urban areas. It is generally held that reduced water consumption is likely to reduce the environmental stress generated by urban areas, particularly in terms of impacts on water catchments, waste water and sewage outputs. However, little research has been conducted to understand how