Urban water demand for manufacturing, construction and service industries: A microdata analysis

Gracia-De-Rentería P. ; Barberán R. (Universidad de Zaragoza) ; Mur J.

Resumen: This study analyses the industrial demand for urban water using a panel dataset of firms operating in the city of Zaragoza (Spain) and looking at three sectors (manufacturing, construction and services) disaggregated on 24 subsectors. Evidence in favour of using the marginal price rather than the average price is obtained, and the selection of the price is found to influence the value of the elasticities. Based on a translog cost function, the direct price elasticity of water (-0.86), the output elasticity (0.73) and the cross-price elasticities between water and capital, labour and supplies (being all of them substitutes) were estimated. By subsectors, the influence of price is only significant in those with a higher share of water in the total production cost. These results indicate that pricing can be used as a tool for managing water demand by promoting conservation of the resource. However, these results also indicate that the simultaneous use of other instruments is advisable to reinforce the impact of pricing policy on water consumption. © This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Licence (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), which permits copying and redistribution for non-commercial purposes with no derivatives, provided the original work is properly cited (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).

Idioma: Inglés

DOI: 10.2166/aqua.2021.105

Año: 2021

Publicado en: Aqua Water Infrastructure, Ecosystems and Society 70, 3 (2021), 274-288
ISSN: 2709-8028

Factor impacto JCR: 0.0 (2021)

Categ. JCR: WATER RESOURCES
Categ. JCR: ENGINEERING, CIVIL

Factor impacto CITESCORE: 0.4 - Environmental Science (Q4) - Engineering (Q4)

Factor impacto SCIMAGO: 0.0 - Civil and Structural Engineering - Ecology - Water Science and Technology - Pollution - Management, Monitoring, Policy and Law

Tipo y forma: Article (Published version)

Área (Departamento): Área Economía Aplicada (Dpto. Economía Aplicada)