Does output market development affect irrigation water institutions? Insights from a case study in northern China

Lei Zhang, Xueqin Zhu, Nico Heerink and Xiaoping Shi

Agricultural Water Management, 2014, vol. 131, issue C, 70-78

Abstract: The main aim of this paper is to examine the impact of changing external conditions on irrigation water institutions in northern China. To this end, we perform a case study analysis of the impact of output market development on irrigation water transactions, using survey data collected among 315 households in Minle County, Zhangye City, Gansu Province, covering the year 2009. Households in this region possess tradable water use rights. Moreover, a major agro-processing company has recently been established and the local government intervenes in the allocation of water to stimulate farmers to grow a cash crop for that company. Despite these favourable enabling and driving factors, we find that market water trade is virtually absent. Instead, we observe that reciprocal water use arrangements (water swaps) have emerged at a limited scale. We argue that factors other than an improvement in the output market (such as producer ignorance, centrally set prices, trust) need to be considered, if improvement in the market for irrigation water is to occur.

Keywords: Irrigation water; Institutional change; Output market; Transaction costs; China (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378377413002497
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:agiwat:v:131:y:2014:i:c:p:70-78

DOI: 10.1016/j.agwat.2013.09.008

Access Statistics for this article

Agricultural Water Management is currently edited by B.E. Clothier, W. Dierickx, J. Oster and D. Wichelns

More articles in Agricultural Water Management from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().