Water conservation campaigns in an emerging economy: how effective are they?

The mounting pressure on fresh water resources encourages many government and commercial organizations to implement strategic water conservation communications campaigns globally, especially in emerging markets. However, empirical evidence supporting the effectiveness of these campaigns is limited. In the current research, I address this research opportunity by developing and empirically testing selected important individual differences and social characteristics as influences on water conservation campaign effectiveness. I randomly obtained survey data from 408 South African consumers. I rigorously assessed scale measurement properties using confirmatory factor analysis, and systematically assessed the theorized relations using structural equation modeling. The results show that conservation campaigns affect consumers’ planned and habitual water conservation behavior, and contribute to our understanding of factors affecting water conservation social marketing communications effectiveness in emerging markets.