Faced with a growing need for water conservation, officials from a North County water agency have turned to a Cal State San Marcos professor to help figure out what motivates people to scale back their consumption.

Dr. P. Wesley Schultz, a social psychologist at CSUSM since 1997, has teamed with the Olivenhain Water District for a pilot program that kicked off earlier this month.

Seventy-five families are participating in the monthlong study designed to find out whether receiving real-time feedback about their water use causes people to cut back.

The program uses a new type of water-use tracking device, the Internet and a special computer application to tell participants how much water they're using throughout the day.

Schultz said last week that a third of the participating households have the devices; the other 50 families are the control group.

He and two of his students are collecting and analyzing data throughout the study.

The results will be shared with Olivenhain water officials after the pilot ends Sept. 10, the professor said.

Joe Randall, management analyst supervisor at Olivenhain Water District, said his agency jumped at the chance to work with Schultz after seeing him make a presentation to county water officials.

The Olivenhain district provides water to customers in a 45-square-mile area that runs from the coast through 4S Ranch to Interstate 15.

"We're just trying to give folks some examples of what they can do, and this one is based on real-time usage," he said. "That's a lot better than once a month, which is what they normally get through the billing cycle. And we're trying to gauge how that feedback affects them in terms of their usage."

Officials with the Vallecitos Water District in San Marcos said they are eager to work with Schultz as well.

Shower-by-shower info

The need to reduce water use has been a growing concern for water agencies throughout the region because of an ongoing drought and a court ruling last year that restricted the pumping of water from the state water delta.

The situation has the potential for significant impact in San Diego County because it relies heavily on imported water.

Most area water agencies dealt with the problem by declaring Level 2 drought alerts before summer started. The alerts came with mandatory conservation measures designed to reduce the region's water use by at least 10 percent.

Those measures, including restrictions on landscape watering and a ban on hosing down outdoor pavements, have enabled the water agencies to meet and, in some cases, exceed the reduction goal so far.

Water officials have warned, however, that continued drought could bring higher-level alerts, higher conservation requirements and more-stringent conservation mandates.

Schultz is part of an emerging group of experts trying to find out whether psychology can be used to get people to conserve.

The professor, who has already conducted similar studies on energy consumption, said the field is becoming increasingly prominent as natural resource supplies are depleted.

Schultz said he got the idea for a pilot program on water conservation after learning about a new device that tracks people's water use at their water meters, analyzes the data and reformulates it to a user-friendly format.

Developed by Los Gatos-based Aquacue, the device uses wireless technology, the Internet and special software to relay the information to a constant display on users' computer screens.

Study participants can check the display to see how much water they used during 14 periods throughout the day.

That gives them a better idea of how individual showers, laundry loads and other activities affect their water-use totals, Randall and Schultz said.

The display also shows families how their water use compares to that of the average home in their neighborhood, as well as the amount they themselves used in previous weeks.

Smiling, frowning faces

Aquacue CEO Shahram Javey said he was pleasantly surprised to learn that study participants were happy to try his company's devices.

The response suggests people are eager to know exactly how and where they can cut back their water use, he said.

"That's one thing that was extremely rewarding for us," Javey said. "There is a demand, and people want to have access to the information."

Study participants whose water use is below average are rewarded with smiley faces on their computer displays; higher-than-average use gets a frowning face.

Schultz declined to make study participants available for interviews or disclose the results he has seen so far, saying that doing so could alter people's responses.

But he said more efficient water use is the goal.

"It's not that people are going to stop using water entirely," Schultz said. "But what you want is a communication channel that will allow people to adjust their consumption, depending on the availability of the resource."

Bill Rucker, Vallecitos Water District general manager, said he was intrigued by Schultz's approach because it shifts the focus from punitive water rates for people whose usage goes over a certain amount.

Although rate hikes tend to work, they typically do so for a short time only, Rucker said.

"You're better off if you can provide ongoing and immediate information about water use so that they know the impact of what they're doing," he said. "Hopefully, you'll gain long-term change that way."

Randall said the growing water problem has officials at water agencies everywhere embracing all kinds of new conservation ideas.

"We're just looking for anything that will work," he said. "What was out of the box a few years ago is now in the box, just because of the water situation we're now in."

Call staff writer Andrea Moss at 760-739-6654.