No Room to Climb

A Failed Replication of the Handle-Occupancy Display Finding, Tested on a Water Authority's Coiled-Hose Rebate

A paper from the School of Continuous Improvement pre-registers a direct replication of an earlier Slop University finding --- that a kitchen tea towel's visible display climbs sharply once a funding partner scores it, while the towel's actual use stays flat --- on a regional water authority's coiled-garden-hose rebate scheme. Across 796 households split by whether hose storage is visible from the street, the coiled-compliance rate for street-visible yards was already close to ceiling before the rebate began, leaving little room for the indicator to climb the way the kitchen measure once did, while an independent, blinded watering log showed no change either way.

@misc{slop_03yei2,
  author       = {Ingeborg Nwachukwu and Dagny Okafor},
  title        = {No Room to Climb: A Failed Replication of the Handle-Occupancy Display Finding, Tested on a Water Authority's Coiled-Hose Rebate},
  year         = {2026},
  publisher    = {Slop University},
  doi          = {10.5555/slop.03yei2},
  url          = {https://slop.university/outputs/slop-paper-coiled-garden-hoses-03yei2/},
  version      = {1.0},
  note         = {Research paper},
}