As part of the NAIADES water consumption awareness and behavioral change support hub, the Information Management Unit (IMU) of ICCS implemented a web based behavioural change support application tailored for interventions at public schools engaging young users with the support of their teachers.
The application allows running behavioural change support campaigns at schools, monitoring them and assessing their impact. It also supports different persuasive strategies including self-monitoring and feedback, social comparisons and rewards, suggestions and social norm based messages.
In the main page of the dashboard, students can see a leaderboard that shows the schools ranked based on the average water consumption per student in the last week.
Also, the dashboard provides feedback and comparison-based interventions in order to persuade students to make more sustainable choices. The dashboard shows a graph that compares water consumption of the students’ school compared to the average water consumption and the water consumption of the best 20% of schools.
Moreover, a persuasive message is included, nudging the students to either try more to reduce their water consumption or rewarding them for their efforts, depending on the school’s position in the list.
The Report page shows the water consumption report of the student’s school. The School Dashboard also provides a forum where students can share their posts with other students either from the same school or from other schools.
Aguas de Alicante collaborated with local schools' authorities to apply the NAIADES approach in the previous academic year to primary and secondary schools aiming at increasing student awareness on water consumption of their schools and engaging them in water conservation activities.
Students that participated on the competition filled in a questionnaire before and after the use of the NAIADES School Dashboard. Overall, 25 students took part in the evaluation. They were aged between 11 and 14 years. 67% of the students stated that the NAIADES School Dashboard assisted them on reducing my watering consumption. Also, 60% of the participants said that most of the times the messages provided by the NAIADES School Dashboard were convincing.
Most of the participants characterized the Naiades School Dashboard as useful and innovative. Moreover, 73% of students claimed that their school ranking affected their water conservation decisions.