View article

There are substantial opportunities for residents to conserve and protect water through irrigation and fertilizer best practices without sacrificing landscape quality. Promoting the adoption of practices and technologies to address water quality and quantity issues is one of the most important contributions extension can make to solving complex water problems. Extension needs to use innovative approaches to encourage adoption of landscape water conservation practices and technologies, and one underused behavior change strategy is social marketing. Social marketing can help extension encourage behavior change by positioning desired behaviors in terms of value to clientele. This study examined the relationship between the benefits people believe their home landscape provides and their engagement in good irrigation and fertilization practices. Aesthetics is the most valued landscape benefit but it is not …