Community-Based Social Marketing : Increase Water Conservation with Limited Rebate Budgets

You’ve rolled out rebates, mailed conservation tips, and launched outreach campaigns—but residents still overwater lawns or ignore leaks.

Why? Because knowing what to do isn’t the same as doing it.

Traditional awareness efforts often fall short when everyday habits, social norms, or small inconveniences get in the way. That’s where Community-Based Social Marketing (CBSM) comes in.

CBSM helps water conservation managers create real, lasting behavior change by removing barriers, tapping into motivations, and making the right actions easy and rewarding. It’s practical, local, and proven to work.

What Is CBSM?

Community-Based Social Marketing (CBSM) is a behavior change approach that goes beyond raising awareness, instead focusing on removing real-world barriers and making sustainable actions easy and appealing.

Created by environmental psychologist Doug McKenzie-Mohr, CBSM combines insights from psychology and marketing to shift habits at the community level. Instead of just telling people to save water, it helps them do it using tools like social norms, prompts, incentives, and personal engagement.

The goal? Make conservation the simple, default choice—and one people actually stick with.

Since its introduction, CBSM has been widely adopted for various environmental issues, from energy efficiency and waste reduction to water conservation and biodiversity protection. 

Thousands of programs around the world have utilized this methodology, often reporting remarkable results in achieving lasting behavior change.

Case studies: How Three Cities Solved Water Crises Without Building a Thing

Florida’s “Skip a Week” Campaign

The Challenge: In 2009, the Southwest Florida Water Management District faced a multi-year drought. Homeowners watered weekly year-round, even when winter rainfall made it unnecessary.

The CBSM Strategy:

  • Target behavior: Water lawns no more than once every two weeks in winter
  • Key barrier discovered: Residents believed lawns needed constant watering
  • Tactics: Myth-busting education, multimedia messaging, homeowners’ association partnerships

The Results:

  • 450% increase in awareness
  • Watering frequency dropped from 3.1 to 1.8 times per month
  • 1.2 billion gallons saved over 4 months
  • $720,000+ in avoided water supply costs

Barrie Water Conservation Program

The Challenge: Rapid 1990s growth required $68 million (CAD) in new water infrastructure for Barrie, Ontario, Canada. The city chose conservation instead.

The CBSM Strategy:

  • Target behavior: Install ultra-low-flow toilets and showerheads
  • Key barriers: Upfront cost and installation hassle
  • Tactics: Rebates making fixtures affordable or even free, contractor partnerships for easy installation, community messaging via mall displays and bill inserts

The Results:

  • 15,000 households participated
  • 16 gallons per person per day saved (24% above target)
  • $68 million in infrastructure spending delayed 10-25 years
  • Program cost only $3.1 million

Durham Region Lawn Watering Initiative

The Challenge: Peak summer demand in 2000 strained Durham, Ontario, Canada’s water treatment capacity and lawn irrigation drove these spikes in water usage.

The CBSM Strategy:

  • Target behavior: Water lawns no more than 1 inch per week
  • Key barrier: Lack of clear guidance and entrenched habits
  • Tactics: Student ambassadors going door-to-door, signed commitment cards, free rain gauges, personalized lawn care tips

The Results:

  • 82% of contacted homeowners signed commitments
  • 32% less water used during peak periods vs. control neighborhoods
  • 55 gallons less were used per household per peak day
  • Campaign cost $58,000 (CAD)—fraction of infrastructure expansion

How it Works: The 5 Steps of CBSM

CBSM offers a pragmatic, step-by-step process for fostering sustainable behaviors. These five steps ensure that programs are strategic, research-driven, and outcome-focused.

1. Select a Specific Behavior

The first step in CBSM is to choose a clear, high-impact behavior—not a broad goal like “save water,” but a specific action like “install a low-flow showerhead.”

Effective behaviors are:

  • Non-divisible (can’t be split into multiple steps), and
  • End-state (the actual action, like using a device—not just buying it).

This focus ensures efforts go toward actions that truly reduce water use. Managers often start by analyzing local water-use data (e.g., indoor vs. outdoor use) and consulting stakeholders to identify the most impactful and feasible behaviors.

Example: Florida’s “Skip a Week” program focused on one simple behavior (skipping every other watering). As a result, it saved 1.2 billion gallons in just four months.

2. Identify Barriers and Benefits

Find out what’s really stopping people. Is it cost? Confusion? Habit? Use surveys, interviews, or past research to understand the friction.

Example: In Durham, Ontario, Canada many residents didn’t know how much to water their lawns, so the campaign gave out rain gauges and clear guidance.

3. Develop a Strategy

Design targeted interventions using proven behavior-change tools:

  • Prompts: Visual reminders at the point of decision (e.g., door hangers saying “It rained this week—skip your next watering”)
  • Commitments: People who publicly pledge are more likely to follow through (e.g., sign a pledge, get a yard sign)
  • Social norms: Leverage community standards (e.g., “Your neighbors use 30% less water than you”)
  • Incentives: Offset financial barriers (e.g., rebates, free audits, tiered rates)
  • Convenience: Make the desired behavior easier (e.g., free installation, pre-programmed schedules, automated recommendations)

Example: Barrie, Ontario, Canada combined free fixtures with strong community messaging and delayed $68M in infrastructure upgrades.

4. Pilot the Program

Test your strategy with a small group—perhaps 100-200 households—before rolling it out utility-wide. Track participation rates, actual behavior change, measured water savings, and unexpected problems.

Example: In Durham’s door-to-door campaign, 82% signed a commitment card—and target areas used 32% less water than the control.

5. Scale and Evaluate

Once your pilot proves successful, scale the program while continuing to track:

  • Participation rates across different customer segments
  • Actual water savings (measured in gallons, not self-reported)
  • Cost-effectiveness compared to other conservation measures
  • Long-term persistence (are customers still conserving six months later? A year later?)

Most utilities launch programs and hope for results. CBSM requires you to measure and adjust based on evidence. 

Just 27% of programs measure outcomes before and after implementation—CBSM’s evaluation and feedback loop is critical for real water-savings verification.

Example: Florida’s campaign saw not just short-term change, but a shift in public norms around watering.

Why CBSM Works When Traditional Marketing Doesn’t

Let’s compare two approaches:

Feature Traditional Awareness Campaign CBSM Program
Goal Reduce lawn watering Reduce lawn watering from 3x to 2x per week
Strategy Bill inserts, social media, website tips Myth-busting messages, neighborhood ambassadors, free home water audits
Message “Every drop counts! Water your lawn less” “Your lawn is healthier with less water, and your neighbors are already doing it”
Result Increased awareness, but minimal behavior change Measurable reduction in watering frequency, sustained over several months

The difference? The first assumes the problem is lack of knowledge. The second identifies the actual barrier and addresses it directly.

CBSM works because it’s built on three core principles:

It focuses on behavior, not attitudes: You don’t need customers to become passionate environmentalists. You just need them to water less frequently. 

It removes friction: Every behavior has barriers—cost, inconvenience, lack of knowledge, social pressure. CBSM systematically identifies and reduces these friction points.

It uses community influence: When conservation becomes a visible community norm (through yard signs, neighborhood challenges, or local ambassadors), adoption accelerates naturally.

Fewer than 60% of conservation studies use any behavioral theory to guide design, and nearly half lack any theoretical grounding at all, which often limits long-term impact. CBSM provides that theoretical foundation, drawing from proven psychological principles to create programs that work.

How To Get Started With CBSM For Your Utility

  • Start with your data: 
    • Which customer segments use the most water? 
    • What end uses drive that consumption? 
    • Choose one behavior that would meaningfully reduce demand if changed.
  • Talk to your customers. 
    • Survey or interview customers in your target segment. 
    • Ask what prevents them from conserving. 
    • Listen for barriers you didn’t anticipate.
  • Design around barriers, not assumptions. 
    • If cost is the barrier, focus on incentives. 
    • If inconvenience is the issue, make conservation easier. 
    • If social norms are at play, leverage community messaging.
  • Test small, measure carefully. 
    • Run a pilot with a few hundred customers. 
    • Track participation, actual behavior change through usage data, and cost per gallon saved.
  • Scale what works, kill what doesn’t. 
    • If your pilot shows strong results, expand. 
    • If results are weak, go back and reassess the barriers.
  • Measure long-term impact. 
    • Track whether customers maintain new behaviors six months and twelve months post-program. 
    • This proves ROI and justifies continued investment.

Making Conservation Stick

Community-Based Social Marketing (CBSM) turns water conservation from a one-time action into a lasting habit. By identifying the real barriers and motivations behind behavior—and using proven tools like social norms, prompts, and feedback—CBSM helps managers design programs people actually follow through on.

Unlike traditional awareness campaigns, CBSM focuses on what truly drives change: local insights, community connection, and reinforcement over time. When applied to water conservation programs, it makes every rebate, message, and outreach effort more effective—turning participation into persistence and awareness into real savings.

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