August 1, 2018 – A team led by Oak Ridge National Laboratory has discovered that residents living in arid environments share a desire for water security, which can ultimately benefit entire neighborhoods. Las Vegas, Nevada’s water utility was the first utility in the United States to implement a water conservation program in which homeowners receive cash incentives for replacing water-hungry grass with plants better suited to an arid climate. Researchers analyzed 15 years of data across 16 neighborhoods to determine whether one home’s participation in the program had a measureable effect on their neighbors’ likelihood of also participating. “The water agencies’ thinking is: if one person’s participation induces conservation behavior in some of their neighbors, then everybody wins,” ORNL’s Christa Brelsford, lead coauthor of the study, said. This work, the third in a series, was published in the journal Networks and Spatial Economics. – Written by Shelby Whitehead
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