How much does water consumption drop when each household takes charge of its own consumption? The case of the city of Seville

Jos頉. Castillo-Manzano, Lourdes Lopez-Valpuesta, Manuel Marchena-G and Diego J. Pedregal

Applied Economics, 2013, vol. 45, issue 32, 4465-4473

Abstract: Making individuals take charge of their own domestic water consumption is one of the measures used to reduce the growing demand for this resource and to achieve sustainable consumption compatible with the goal of equity. The use of individual meters instead of communal meters and fixing tariffs by inhabitant rather than by household are two measures aimed at achieving these objectives. This article assesses the measures put in place in the Seville metropolitan area during the last 20 years with an unobserved component model set up in a state-space framework estimated using maximum likelihood. Water consumption elasticity to individual meters has changed from --0.307 to --1.317 with the introduction of per inhabitant tariffs, which demonstrates that there are water-saving synergies when the two measures are implemented together. The reductions in water consumption achieved with these measures are also longer lasting than the changes in consumption habits during the frequent droughts in Seville.

Date: 2013
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/00036846.2013.788785 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

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:taf:applec:v:45:y:2013:i:32:p:4465-4473

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/RAEC20

DOI: 10.1080/00036846.2013.788785

Access Statistics for this article

Applied Economics is currently edited by Anita Phillips

More articles in Applied Economics from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().