Holistic approach to water conservation behavior in urban environment: a systematic literature review

This paper argues that enhancing the water conservation behavior of the urban population would provide an alternative solution by demand curtailment and behavior change, rather than traditional methods of increasing water supply. A structured, evidence-based approach to identify relevant research studies has been instrumental in this research. The paper provides a systematic review of 35 papers, narrowed down from 3089 papers, which have converged towards an integrated approach to water conservation behavior. The significant factors of water conservation behavior were classified under four broad themes: psychological, situational, demographic, and contextual. The review showed that the situational and contextual variables were understudied among these factors. Further, this study identifies research gaps in the models of water conservation behavior and highlights the need for future work. The issue of sustainability of water through a cogent argument based upon behavioral studies in water conservation has been carried out.