Roles of Levies for Sustainable Domestic Water Consumption

Zhifang Wu (), Jennifer McKay and Elizabeth Hemphill

Water Resources Management: An International Journal, Published for the European Water Resources Association (EWRA), 2011, vol. 25, issue 3, 929-940

Abstract: Sustainable development is the modern rhetoric to guide environmental or natural resources management. There are many ways to do this and one is the wider utilization of economic instruments, such as taxes and levies. Although such levies are becoming common in Australia and worldwide, the role of the taxes or levies is still limited. In many cases, these taxes/levies -although environmentally related- have a fiscal rather than a purely environmental motive, for example, the Natural Resources Management (NRM) Levy in South Australia. This study evaluates the NRM levy policy using one NRM region and focussing on the Adelaide urban community. Data was collected through a web-based survey with 770 respondents who answered 59 questions. The research found that community strongly prefers a levy calculated on the volume of water consumed. Respondents also indicated that they would use less water if the levy were calculated on the volume of water consumed. The clear implications of the results suggest that if a tax or levy aims to change water consumption behaviour then it should be based on the volume of water consumed not on property value. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2011

Keywords: Water resources management; Water consumption behaviour; Water conservation; Community responses; Policy evaluation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011
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DOI: 10.1007/s11269-010-9734-5

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