Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Peak shifting is a key method to enhance the resilience of water supply infrastructure. Due to limitations related to the costs of smart meters, experimentally investigating the impact of a time-of-use tariff on inducing peak shifting in water usage has been challenging. Having introduced smart meters across 1,890 households, this study investigated behavioral responses to reduced water prices during off-peak hours (i.e., by increasing the relative cost of peak times). This was achieved by implementing a pricing scheme offering a 60% discount from 23:00 to 05:59 hours and a 20% discount from 10:00 to 16:59 hours. The results revealed significant changes in water usage behavior near the boundary between off-peak and peak times, suggesting a shift in water usage behavior towards the off-peak period. Moreover, a time-series analysis demonstrated the peak shifting induced by off-peak price reductions. Furthermore, this study examines cognitive processing and its impact on altering water usage behaviors on an hourly basis. These findings suggest that reducing prices during off-peak periods can effectively induce peak shifting across a broad range of times.