Water Resources and Economics最新文献

The Water Framework Directive (WFD) has set a deadline for 2027 to reach at least good ecological status (GES) in coastal waters in the EU. As nutrient pollution (eutrophication) is one of the main pressures in most EU coastal waters, and Danish waters in particular, significant nutrient reductions are required. In this paper, we take an integrated environmental-economic modelling approach to assess alternative strategies to mitigate non-point source nutrient pollution. A spatially explicit optimization model, TargetEconN, is implemented at the Danish national scale and extended to include mussel production as a marine water quality improvement measure. Different eutrophication mitigation strategies investigated in the model are characterized by whether nitrogen emissions are reduced at the source, between the source and the recipient e.g., by establishing wetlands, or in the recipient itself. We run scenarios exploring the uncertainty in baseline load assumptions and the effects of mussel farming. The results show that the potential for marine measures depends on the baseline load assumptions and that marine measures have a limited impact on the overall costs of achieving GES. The results also show that including marine measures has a significant indirect impact through the influence on the spatial distribution of land-based measures. We conclude that including mussel farming in policy initiatives to meet WFD targets has potential, but that the distributional effects across sectors and spillover effects to other policy targets should be a central part of the ex-ante policy discussions. We argue therefore that spatially explicit integrated modelling, as the model developed for this paper, can offer useful insights to manage the unescapable trade-offs in effective policy design to meet the WFD.

The effectiveness of groundwater in fulfilling crop water deficits depends on its quality and quantity. This paper examines the relationship between irrigators’ stated concerns over groundwater quality and groundwater quantity and their past water use and cropping decisions. Information on irrigator concerns over groundwater quality and quantity is obtained from 626 survey responses of agricultural producers in the Kansas portion of the High Plains Aquifer. We combine 20 years of field-level water use and cropping data with each of the 626 survey responses. We find that irrigators indicating elevated concern over either groundwater quality or groundwater quantity correlates with less total water use, fewer total irrigated acres, and fewer acres of irrigated corn. Additionally, concerns over groundwater quantity generally correlate with a greater reduction in water use along multiple water use margins compared to equal concerns over groundwater quality.

Residential water demand has been extensively studied, with the impact of various household characteristics on consumption well-documented. However, the specific effect of gender on household consumption remains insufficiently identified due to the predominant focus on mixed-gender households in previous research. In this paper, we aim to address this gap by examining gender differences in water consumption specifically within single-gender households. To accomplish this, we analyze data from 275 households equipped with individual meters in the city of Gijón, Spain, between 2017 and 2021. Our approach involves two main steps: first, the estimation of a Stone-Geary demand function for water consumption for both women and men single-gender households, and second, employ the Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition to examine gender differences based on the previous estimations. Our findings reveal that women's households consume significantly more water compared to men's households. Additionally, we observe that the demand for water is more inelastic among women, and their level of conditional use threshold is higher than that of men. Importantly, we find that these differences can be primarily attributed to distinct factors such as family composition, housing characteristics, and bill information between genders.

Without taking additional measures, flooding is becoming more likely and intense in a changing climate, which causes large economic damage. Households and firms are directly impacted by physical flood damage, but further ripple effects on society occur through business disruptions. By using post-disaster survey data from the 2021 flood event in the Netherlands, this study adds to the literature on business interruption duration and losses after flooding. The current empirical literature on flood impacts on firms is often unable to distinguish separate effects for flooded and non-flooded firms and does not incorporate flood severity and the influence of risk reduction measures. Here, we use multivariate regression models to determine depth-duration functions that describe the relationship between flood hazard characteristics and business interruption duration. This relationship can be used to calibrate flood damage models that capture indirect firm impacts. The prediction of business interruption after flooding allows for differentiation in business interruption between firms within a flooded area, reducing the reliance of these macroeconomic models on restrictive assumptions. Our results indicate that a day of business interruption duration costs a firm on average 0.5 % of their annual revenue; an effect that is stronger for firms with a weaker connection to their region. Flood damage mitigation (FDM) measures taken at the building level do not significantly affect business interruption duration, although further research on this is required. Finally, quick damage compensation is found to reduce business interruption duration and thus revenue losses, calling for higher insurance uptake and rapid and streamlined post-disaster insurance and government compensation.

A watershed consists of more than two regions intending to apply ecological compensation to solve the transboundary pollution problems. For this purpose, we develop a differential game model to investigate each region's optimal strategy and show the following main conclusions: (1) There is a set of optimal ecological compensation rates that improve the welfare of each region and produce Pareto improvement results. (2) Ecological compensation shifts partial pollution reduction investments from downstream to upstream regions and increases total reduction investments in the basin. (3) Ecological compensation improves the water ecosystem and increases each region's yield and income level.

With the increasing conflict between the supply and demand of water resources, enhancing water resource use efficiency has gradually become a focus of attention. As a new way to manage water resources, water rights trading pilots have been implemented in China. It is important to explore the impact of water rights trading on regional water resource use efficiency and possible impact paths. This paper employs a global nonradial directional distance function (GNDDF) model to measure water resource use efficiency, which is more accurate and reliable. To discern the effect of China's water rights trading pilot policy on enhancing regional water resource use efficiency, we apply the regression control method (RCM) for counterfactual analysis and test the possible pathways through which the water rights trading policy affects water resource use efficiency. This article draws the following conclusions. (i) China's overall water resource use efficiency has not reached a high level over the past decade, and water resource use efficiency has exhibited substantial regional disparities. (ii) There is some evidence to suggest that the water rights trading policy may have a positive impact on improving water resource use efficiency in the pilot provinces. However, the improvement effect exhibits regional variations, which are likely attributed to the initial water resource use levels in the pilot provinces and the specific implementation modes of water rights trading. (iii) Water rights trading policies can enhance water resource use efficiency through two pathways, including facilitating reclaimed water reuse and promoting water use restructuring.

Adapting to changes in water availability is becoming an increasingly important environmental management objective in many regions around the world. One way for cities to conserve water is to enhance drought-resistant vegetation cover. This revegetation practice can take place on many types of land, including road-side verges (also known as nature strips or boulevards), which, in Western Australia, are publicly owned but managed privately by residents of adjoining properties. As preferences for alternative verge groundcovers are not well understood, designing solutions that help achieve environmental goals and satisfy communities is a challenge. We survey community members in Perth, Western Australia, and find that peoples’ preferences for verge landscape design are largely bimodal, and can be classified under two dominant groups of people: those who prefer native vegetation, which requires little irrigation, and those who prefer watered grass. Neighbourhood norms prevail in their rankings, where individuals whose neighbours have planted water-conserving native vegetation gardens on their verges are also more likely to prefer ecological landscape designs. Increasing the extent of gardens that feature water-conserving native plants in high-profile public areas may further increase community acceptance of low water-use groundcovers, and may assist in driving changes in landscape management practices towards having more ecological landscape designs on verges, and beyond.

California's demand-side urban water management policies, such as shifting water pricing structures from non-conservation to conservation-based rates, have received much attention in terms of meeting the state's short- and long-term water conservation policies. This paper quantifies the effect of pricing structure changes on residential water consumption using a survey dataset of 189 major California water utilities from 1994 to 2019. Results of our study demonstrate that residential per capita per day water consumption was reduced by an average of 2.6% when water agencies switched from non-conservation-based to conservation-based pricing structures. We also found evidence that the longer a utility maintained a non-conservation-based rate structure before switching to conservation-based pricing, the larger the water consumption reduction in that utility's service area. In addition, utilities that reverted to non-conservation rates after having longer-term conservation pricing structures experienced smaller increases compared to having long-term non-conservation ones in water use in their service areas. This suggests evidence of a crowding-in effect for transitions from conservation-based to non-conservation-based pricing structures.

Pumped denitrification bioreactors are currently being assessed in the field to extend the use of traditional, subsurface drainage bioreactors. Pumped bioreactors for the treatment of drainage ditches, surface waters, and cisterns intercepting drainage were evaluated to provide a basis of the unit cost of bioreactor operation ($ kg NO₃–N removed⁻¹) under a variety of scenarios. The unit costs were modeled using a techno-economic analysis. The variables assessed in the analysis included nitrate removal rate, bioreactor lifespan, and operating periods, which were assumed. To evaluate the impact of these variables on the unit cost, a sensitivity analysis was conducted where one variable was adjusted (e.g., lifespan) while the other variables were kept the same as a traditional bioreactor. The cistern and supplemental surface water bioreactors were larger in size and had similar unit costs ranging from ∼$5 to $27 kg NO₃–N removed⁻¹ for all scenarios except for the low mass removal and worst-case scenarios. The smaller, ditch diversion bioreactor had unit costs in the best- and worst-case scenarios in the range of $24 to $619 kg NO₃–N removed⁻¹, respectively. A breakeven analysis indicated increasing the mass removal rate of the bioreactors and ensuring an operating period greater than 6-months had the greatest impact on reducing the unit cost compared to a traditional bioreactor. Overall, the larger-scale surface water and cistern bioreactors had comparable, but slightly higher, unit costs than traditional bioreactors under most scenarios evaluated. This information can be used to optimize and inform of the potential of pumped bioreactor systems.

There is an increasing focus on improving environmental health in major river catchments to address pressures from extensive modification and overuse. However, river catchments often involve many complex and competing uses, making it difficult to prioritise where remediation actions should be concentrated. In this research, the Best Worst Scaling (BWS) technique is applied to assess community views about the relative importance of multiple major issues in the Murray Darling Basin that span environmental, social, economic, and cultural dimensions. The BWS technique was applied by identifying 16 major issues relevant to river management, generating a statement for each, and then using an experimental design to create profiles with four statements each. A random sample of respondents across New South Wales were each presented with four profiles and asked to identify the statement that they agreed with most and least for each profile. The results, analysed through both counting and logistic regression methods, show that the community prioritized environmental issues over economic, social, and cultural aspects. Improved water quality, native animals, water flow management and fish populations were identified as greater priority issues with both the logit model and counting model approaches. The analysis demonstrates how application of the logit model generates greater insights than is available with the counting approach.