Conservation Policies: Who Responds to Price and Who Responds to Prescription?

Casey Wichman, Laura Taylor and Roger von Haefen

No 20466, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: The efficiency properties of price and non-price instruments for conservation in environmental policy are well understood. Yet, there is little evidence comparing the effectiveness of these instruments, especially when considering water resource management. We exploit a rich panel of residential water consumption to examine heterogeneous responses to both price and non-price conservation policies during times of drought while controlling for unobservable household characteristics. Our empirical models suggest that the burden of pricing policies fall disproportionately on low-income households and fail to reduce consumption among households who generally are large consumers of water. However, prescriptive policies such as restrictions on outdoor water use result in uniform responses across income classes while simultaneously targeting reductions from households with irrigation systems or historically high consumption.

JEL-codes: D12 H42 L51 L95 Q25 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr and nep-env
Note: EEE
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Published as Wichman, Casey J. & Taylor, Laura O. & von Haefen, Roger H., 2016. "Conservation policies: Who responds to price and who responds to prescription?," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 79(C), pages 114-134.

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w20466.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Conservation policies: Who responds to price and who responds to prescription? (2016)
Working Paper: Conservation Policies: Who Responds to Price and Who Responds to Prescription? (2016)
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:nbr:nberwo:20466

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w20466

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().