Behavioural Insights Project for Water Compliance

DNRME administers a wide variety of legislation that governs access to, and use of, Queensland’s natural resources (land, water and vegetation). The legislation requires DNRME to have effective mechanisms to meet its regulatory requirements and also monitor and respond to identified risks to Queensland’s natural resources and respond accordingly.

A range of tools are used to respond to non-compliance events. The spectrum of compliance tools available range from those that proactively inform persons that wish to comply (e.g. tools that have a strong educational and awareness focus), through to those which reactively address non-compliance by some form of remedial or pecuniary sanction (enforcement tools).

DNRME’s compliance approach goes beyond ensuring conformity with the law. In addition to encouraging compliant behaviour, the approach involves educating and equipping Queenslanders to use and manage natural resources in a sustainable way. The intent is to facilitate a change or a continuation of a particular behaviour - whether it is about ensuring compliance with laws or encouraging best practice resource management to encourage a desired behaviour. It involves ensuring the intention of why the ‘rules’ are in place are understood and supported, which goes beyond simply encouraging compliant behaviour.

DNRME seeks to further understand the motivations and barriers of Water Entitlement Holders in rural Queensland in order to develop tools and implement activities to decrease barriers to, and increase motivations for, appropriately managing their water take, as well as apply triggers to reinforce key messages.

This project will build on previous research initiated by the department in 2013, titled Understanding drivers of non-compliance with water resource legislation in Queensland. Using a case study approach in two ‘water areas’, the goal of the research was to understand the factors influencing water users’ compliance decisions, whether they were factors that act as barriers to compliance, motivators for compliance, or motivators for non-compliance.

This research will also build on findings from phase 1 of the Education for Water Entitlement Holders project (2014) where operational and policy staff participated in five regional workshops to generate ideas for compliance education initiatives. Three key themes were identified in the research: Are you authorised? (for this activity); Have you taken too much?; and, What is the impact of take?.

Overall project objective
The key objective for this project is to:
* Strengthen NR’s approach to water compliance through development of a program of activities for Water Entitlement Holders in rural Queensland that decreases barriers to, and increases motivation for, appropriately managing their water take, as well as applies triggers to reinforce positive behaviours.