Water Resources and Economics最新文献

The value and vulnerability of salt marshes has led to efforts to ensure their preservation, including the preservation of marsh transgression zones (uplands onto which marshes can migrate) and restrictions on shoreline armoring. Coastal armoring involves the placement of hardened structures such as revetments and bulkheads along the shoreline. These structures can prevent coastal marshes from migrating onto adjacent uplands as sea levels rise, thereby causing marsh loss over time. Hence, efficient targeting of efforts to ensure marsh sustainability requires an understanding of where and why coastal armoring is likely to occur. This article develops a random utility model that characterizes residential landowners’ shoreline armoring decisions for beachfront and non-beachfront residential property, focusing on whether armoring is influenced by features related to marsh migration. The model is illustrated using parcel-level data from Accomack County, Virginia with armoring observations on each parcel for two time periods, 2002 and 2013. Independent models for the two time periods suggest that landowners in the case study area do not tend to construct armoring in ways that impede marsh migration—all else equal armoring is less likely to occur in areas suitable for marsh migration. Rather, armoring appears to be motivated primarily by factors associated with shoreline erosion risk such as high wave energy.

Participatory Value Evaluation (PVE) is a new survey method which elicits citizens' preferences over the allocation of public budgets as well as their private income. In a PVE, citizens are asked to choose the best portfolio of projects given a governmental and a private budget constraint. First, this paper aligns PVE with the traditional Kaldor-Hicks welfare economics framework underlying many Cost-Benefit Analyses. Second, this paper positions PVE against other valuation methods. Third, this paper applies the PVE method to evaluate the impacts of projects mitigating flood risks in the Netherlands. This empirical application reveals that Dutch citizens indicate a preference for projects that combine strengthening dikes and give space to the river to flood safely, particularly when such projects positively influence biodiversity and recreational opportunities.

Water policy requires well established metrics for success. Precise metrics allow for quantifying progress and adjusting processes to produce the desired outcomes. We analyze the different schools of thought, nomenclatures and indicators developed for tracking water for human activities. After comparing a variety of terms related to water accounting used to serve the different purposes (environmental vs. ecological economics), we found that the different approaches to water tracking utilize identical terms to refer to distinctive concepts. The characterization of widely used terms such as 'water use' varies across different branches of literature. Different approaches to water measurement and its efficiency have an impact on water allocation. Our paper points out that the current definitions and methods for tracking water for human activities may offer contradictory advice over whether progress is being made towards desirable objectives, which may differ across stakeholders. This review aims at helping the transfer of academic results to empirical decision-making by discerning the differences among the variety of indicators available in the literature and their empirical implications. The ambiguity in the water terminology should be clarified before policy decisions can be useful in practice for guiding actions.

This paper investigates behavioral responses to a complicated and peculiar change in a municipality's water rate structure. In 2006, the City of Norman, Oklahoma Water Utility added a four-dollar fixed fee, reduced the number of block-rate tiers, and changed the rate structure from one that decreased and then increased across higher consumption block groups, to a strictly increasing rate structure. The changes in the volumetric rates were not uniform across the block rates. Customers at ultra-low volumes of consumption faced a one-penny reduction in their volumetric rate but experienced a large increase in total and average cost of water due to the addition of the relatively large fixed fee. In contrast, higher-volume users faced a less severe increase in the total and average charge per gallon consumed. To address the co-determination of average water charge and consumption choice, we estimate separate regressions for households grouped by pre-price change demand and the block group of last gallon consumed. Using detailed, monthly panel data for 23,408 residential water customers from 2002 to 2010 and a variety of model specifications, our results highlight heterogeneous responses across consumption groups. Ultra-low users responded to the price-regime change by increasing consumption whereas higher-volume users reduced consumption. Behavioral responses were found to be greater in the longer-run than shorter-run as expected.

Because the main modes of transmission of the COVID-19 virus are respiration and contact, WHO recommends frequent washing of hands with soap under running water for at least 20 s. This article investigates how the level of concern about COVID-19 affects the likelihood of washing hands frequently in sub-Saharan Africa. We discuss the implication of the findings for water-scarce environment. The study makes use of a unique survey dataset from 12 sub-Saharan African countries collected in April 2020 (first round) and May 2020 (second round) and employs an extended ordered probit model with endogenous covariate. The results show that the level of concern about the spread of the virus increases the likelihood of washing hands with soap under running water for a minimum of 20 s at least five times a day. The increase in the probability of handwashing due to concern about COVID-19, ranges from 3% for Benin to 6.3% for South Africa. The results also show heterogeneous effects across gender- and age-groups, locality and various water sources. However, in Africa, the sustainability of the handwashing protocol could be threatened by the severe water scarcity that exists in the region. To sustain frequent handwashing, sub-Saharan Africa needs an effective strategy for water management and supply.

Large water demands by the mining industry are of increasing concern around the world. The cost of a specific water management regulation is studied for an oil sands mining operation in Canada, where restrictions on water withdrawals vary with fluctuations in the river. A stochastic optimal control problem is formulated for a firm choosing production, water use, and the timing to build a water storage facility, under conditions of uncertain oil prices and uncertain water withdrawal limits. As no closed form solution is available, a stochastic dynamic programming approach is implemented to determine the difference in value and optimal controls for the oil-producing asset, with and without water restrictions. The cost of the restrictions is estimated to be quite small given historical river flow conditions, while cost is shown to increase under drier conditions. A long run marginal cost curve is developed showing the cost of increasing restrictions given expectations about future river conditions and oil prices.

The purpose of this study is to empirically investigate the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) relationship between water quality and income within the European Union, considering spatial interdependences across countries. To this end, we apply a spatial econometrics framework using panel data, at the national level, for twenty EU countries across seventeen years, 1998 to 2014. Furthermore, we account for the role of human and livestock population size, institutional quality and economic openness for water quality. Results show that a significant EKC relationship is seen with an inverted N-shaped relationship between income and water quality. Water quality is decreasing in income for low income levels, increasing in income when GDP per capita for medium income levels, and deteriorating for high income levels. Eight out of twenty countries have income levels associated with a declining water quality. Spatial spillovers between countries are significant. Higher livestock density levels are associated with lower levels of water quality, while institutional quality and openness to trade are positively associated with water quality.

We formalise a dynamic water pricing model as a tool for increasing social surplus in short-term water allocations and long-term water supply planning and investments. We calculate, in monetary terms, the intertemporal risk that current water uses impose on future water availability, termed as the Risk-Adjusted User Cost (RAUC), given multi-period droughts. Our model is calibrated to the water supply system in the Australian Capital Territory. Results show that the RAUC may be a substantial proportion of the cost of supplying water, and incorporating it in the water price can result in long-term welfare gains.

The city of Cape Town suffered a severe water crisis in 2018. At the peak of the drought in South Africa's Western Cape, a randomized control trial at 105 schools investigated the impact of two behavioral interventions to encourage responsible water usage: detailed water usage data feedback from smart meters, and an interschool competition. Interventions reduced water usage in these schools by 15–26%. There was no significant difference between the information feedback and the combination of information feedback and competition. This example from Cape Town demonstrates the effectiveness of combining smart technologies with nudges. It provides a model of water conservation interventions for sustainable cities.