Household Water Usage and Irrigation Practices

Water scarcity has become a widespread concern due to water pollution issues and drought conditions in the United States (Bennett, Carpenter, and Caraco 2001; Svoboda 2015). Previous research has shown that well and potable (drinking) water are often used by homeowners for indoor and outdoor purposes (Vickers 2001). As a result, one way to develop meaningful programs that lead to water conservation is to understand how consumers use water inside and outside their homes and create incentives for them to conserve water. Residential consumers account for most urban water use (Lee, Tansel, and Balbin 2011), with showers, toilets, and washing machines using the majority of indoor water (Mayer et al. 1999). Regarding outdoor water use, an estimated 75% of US residential water is used outdoors (Brehm, Pasko, and Eisenhauer 2013), with over half of it going to landscape irrigation (or roughly 9 billion gallons per day) (EPA 2016).