Beyond doom and gloom: evidence from Azerbaijan for positive communication for water conservation

ABSTRACT Provoking emotions in water conservation campaigns works better than information provision. However, scholars disagree on the pathways through which emotions impact behaviour, and on whether positive communication works better than negative one. Based on an experiment with undergraduate students in Azerbaijan (N = 214), we demonstrate how emotions may help stimulate desirable behaviour, and that positive emotions are more effective that negative ones. We offer policy recommendations to adjust the ongoing public conservation campaign ‘birdamcı’ (‘a water drop’ in Azerbaijani) to maximize its impact. Our findings are also relevant for water conservation beyond Azerbaijan.

• Publication year

  2026

• Venue

  Water international

• Publication date

  2026-02-05

• Fields of study

  Not labeled

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1080/02508060.2026.2617007
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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