Determinants of residential water demand in Germany

Joachim Schleich and Thomas Hillenbrand

No S3/2007, Working Papers "Sustainability and Innovation" from Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research (ISI)

Abstract: In this paper we econometrically analyze the impact of several economic, environmental and social determinants for the average per capita demand for water and sewage in about 600 water supply areas in Germany. Besides prices, income and household size, we also consider the effects of population age, the share of wells, and rainfall and temperature during the summer months on water demand. We also attempt to explain regional differences in per capita residential water consumption, which is currently about 30 % lower in the new federal states than in the old states. Our estimate for the price elasticity of -0.229 suggests that the response of residential water demand in Germany is rather inelastic, but no significant difference could be found between both regions. In contrast, the income elasticity in the new states is found to be 0.685 which is more than double that of the old states. Differences in prices and income alone explain the largest part of the current gap in residential water use between the two regions. Our results further suggest that household size, the share of wells and summer rainfall have a negative impact on water demand. In contrast, higher age appears to be associated with higher water use. We also find (weak) evidence for an impact of rainfall but not of temperature on residential water use. Our findings imply that future research should include analyses of household- level data to further explore the effects of socio-economic determinants, and analyses of panel data to adequately study the effects of climate change on residential water use.

Date: 2007
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/28515/1/538778458.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Determinants of residential water demand in Germany (2009)
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:zbw:fisisi:s32007

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers "Sustainability and Innovation" from Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research (ISI) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics ().