Building Sustainable Relationships Between Clean Water Agencies and the Community: A Strategic Framework to Leverage Emotional Motivators

The purpose of this study is to understand how Clean Water Agencies (CWAs) can leverage emotional motivators to create deeper connections that build sustainable customer relationships. Although the study of emotions and how they influence human behavior is an established concept, it has never been explicitly applied to the utilities sector. By conducting interviews with 15 leading CWAs in the US and three marketing experts from outside the water industry, and by gathering survey data from 1,032 customers, we find several qualitative and quantitative results that help us map the current situation in the utilities sector. Although some participating utilities have done extensive research into customer demographics and how to target these best in their outreach, very few have explicitly discussed emotions as part of this process. We find that only 13% of the sample utilities have performed campaigns that had the specific aim of targeting emotions, and only 33% of customer respondents feel a personal connection to their local utility. Our results show that improving awareness of the work that the utility does, and connecting to community values will lead to significant improvements in the level of personal connection that the customer feels to the local utility. Specifically, by increasing awareness of work or by increasing the feeling that the utility connects to community values, customers are 2.3 and 2 times more likely to feel a personal connection to their utility, respectively.