Reducing Water Demand through Behavioural Incentivisation

Competition: Breakthrough 4: Catalyst

Amount awarded: £1,874,010 

Led by: Severn Trent Water 

Partners: Consumer Council for Water, Hafren Dyfrdwy Cyfyngedig, Nectar 360 Ltd, Portsmouth Water, South Staffs Water and Cambridge Water, Spring Innovation Ltd 

Expected completion date: July 2026

Water cycle tag: Customers and communities

We have partnered with Nectar, the UK’s largest loyalty scheme and customer behaviour experts to develop a utility-sector first: using smart meter gamification to incentivise customers to reduce their consumption by awarding points for water-efficient behaviour. This can also drive lower water and energy bills for customers.  

“This funding enables us to partner with Nectar to trial at scale and pace behavioural incentivisation to drive change in deep-set customer behaviours. This will support sector commitments to reduce water consumption to 110 litres per person per day by 2050, helping to protect the environment and ensure resilient supplies.” – Tanvir Razvi, Business Strategy and Development Manager, Severn Trent Water Ltd

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Update from the project (January 2026)

Severn Trent has continued its innovative water reduction incentive trial in partnership with Nectar, supported by key collaborators. The initiative rewards customers with Nectar points for reducing their water usage, encouraging long-term behavioural change. We have completed four recruitment cycles, with c.5,000 customers now enrolled. We are targeting an accelerated customer recruitment drive in January 2026 including a trial using Nectar’s channels and exploring utilising advertorials in December instead of emails to broaden reach. PCC reduction remains positive compared to the control group, with greater consumption reduction seen during summer hot weather campaigns. Since the last reporting period, and guided by behavioural science, the project has conducted a wholesale review of the original proposition and customer communications to strengthen how we engage with customers and to drive positive change. We have conducted two randomised control tests varying incentives and behavioural messaging to understand how customers engage and behave. Initial findings highlight that households responded better to environmental messages compared to negative social proof, and offering nectar points incentivises customers to save more water. We will continue to test new messaging and incentives, and introduce new functionality and gamification to the user interface as we increase customers recruited onto the trial.