IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/zbw/fisisi/s32007.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Determinants of residential water demand in Germany

Author

Listed:
  • Schleich, Joachim
  • Hillenbrand, Thomas

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.

Suggested Citation

  • Schleich, Joachim & Hillenbrand, Thomas, 2007. "Determinants of residential water demand in Germany," Working Papers "Sustainability and Innovation" S3/2007, Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research (ISI).
    • Handle: RePEc:zbw:fisisi:s32007
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/28515/1/538778458.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Garcia, Serge & Reynaud, Arnaud, 2004. "Estimating the benefits of efficient water pricing in France," Resource and Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 26(1), pages 1-25, March.
    2. Rita Martins & Adelino Fortunato, 2005. "Residential water demand under block rates: a Portuguese case study," GEMF Working Papers 2005-09, GEMF, Faculty of Economics, University of Coimbra.
    3. Jasper M. Dalhuisen & Raymond J. G. M. Florax & JHenri L. F. de Groot & Peter Nijkamp, 2003. "Price and Income Elasticities of Residential Water Demand: A Meta-Analysis," Land Economics, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 79(2), pages 292-308.
    4. S. Gaudin, 2006. "Effect of price information on residential water demand," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 38(4), pages 383-393.
    5. Céline Nauges & Alban Thomas, 2003. "Long-run Study of Residential Water Consumption," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 26(1), pages 25-43, September.
    6. Maria García-valiñas, 2005. "Efficiency and Equity in Natural Resources Pricing: A Proposal for Urban Water Distribution Service," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 32(2), pages 183-204, October.
    7. Hausman, Jerry, 2015. "Specification tests in econometrics," Applied Econometrics, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA), vol. 38(2), pages 112-134.
    8. Céline Nauges & Alban Thomas, 2000. "Privately Operated Water Utilities, Municipal Price Negotiation, and Estimation of Residential Water Demand: The Case of France," Land Economics, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 76(1), pages 68-85.
    9. Andrew C. Worthington & Mark Hoffman, 2008. "An Empirical Survey Of Residential Water Demand Modelling," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 22(5), pages 842-871, December.
    10. Arbues, Fernando & Garcia-Valinas, Maria Angeles & Martinez-Espineira, Roberto, 2003. "Estimation of residential water demand: a state-of-the-art review," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 32(1), pages 81-102, March.
    11. Roberto Martinez-Espineira & Celine Nauges, 2004. "Is all domestic water consumption sensitive to price control?," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 36(15), pages 1697-1703.
    12. Stock, James H & Wright, Jonathan H & Yogo, Motohiro, 2002. "A Survey of Weak Instruments and Weak Identification in Generalized Method of Moments," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 20(4), pages 518-529, October.
    13. White, Halbert, 1980. "A Heteroskedasticity-Consistent Covariance Matrix Estimator and a Direct Test for Heteroskedasticity," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 48(4), pages 817-838, May.
    14. Gilg, Andrew & Barr, Stewart, 2006. "Behavioural attitudes towards water saving? Evidence from a study of environmental actions," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 57(3), pages 400-414, May.
    15. R. Martinez-Espiñeira, 2002. "Residential Water Demand in the Northwest of Spain," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 21(2), pages 161-187, February.
    16. Antonio Musolesi & Mario Nosvelli, 2007. "Dynamics of residential water consumption in a panel of Italian municipalities," Applied Economics Letters, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 14(6), pages 441-444.
    17. R. Martínez-Espiñeira, 2003. "Estimating Water Demand under Increasing-Block Tariffs Using Aggregate Data and Proportions of Users per Block," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 26(1), pages 5-23, September.
    18. Massimiliano Mazzanti & Anna Montini, 2006. "The determinants of residential water demand: empirical evidence for a panel of Italian municipalities," Applied Economics Letters, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 13(2), pages 107-111.
    19. Olmstead, Sheila M. & Michael Hanemann, W. & Stavins, Robert N., 2007. "Water demand under alternative price structures," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 54(2), pages 181-198, September.
    20. Antonioli, B. & Filippini, M., 2001. "The use of a variable cost function in the regulation of the Italian water industry," Utilities Policy, Elsevier, vol. 10(3-4), pages 181-187.
    21. Sylvestre Gaudin & Ronald C. Griffin & Robin C. Sickles, 2001. "Demand Specification for Municipal Water Management: Evaluation of the Stone-Geary Form," Land Economics, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 77(3), pages 399-422.
    22. R. G. Taylor & John R. McKean & Robert A. Young, 2004. "Alternate Price Specifications for Estimating Residential Water Demand with Fixed Fees," Land Economics, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 80(3), pages 463-475.
    23. Ruijs, A. & Zimmermann, A. & van den Berg, M., 2008. "Demand and distributional effects of water pricing policies," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 66(2-3), pages 506-516, June.
    24. Jinyong Hahn & Jerry Hausman, 2003. "Weak Instruments: Diagnosis and Cures in Empirical Econometrics," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 93(2), pages 118-125, May.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Henrique Monteiro, 2010. "Residential Water Demand in Portugal: checking for efficiency-based justifications for increasing block tariffs," Working Papers Series 1 ercwp0110, ISCTE-IUL, Business Research Unit (BRU-IUL).
    2. María Ángeles García-Valiñas & Sara Suárez-Fernández, 2022. "Are Economic Tools Useful to Manage Residential Water Demand? A Review of Old Issues and Emerging Topics," Post-Print hal-04067487, HAL.
    3. David Hoyos & Alaitz Artabe, 2017. "Regional Differences in the Price Elasticity of Residential Water Demand in Spain," Water Resources Management: An International Journal, Published for the European Water Resources Association (EWRA), Springer;European Water Resources Association (EWRA), vol. 31(3), pages 847-865, February.
    4. Joachim Schleich & Thomas Hillenbrand, 2019. "Residential water demand responds asymmetrically to rising and falling prices," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 51(45), pages 4973-4981, September.
    5. Mónica Maldonado-Devis & Vicent Almenar-Llongo, 2021. "A Panel Data Estimation of Domestic Water Demand with IRT Tariff Structure: The Case of the City of Valencia (Spain)," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(3), pages 1-26, January.
    6. Tomas Havranek & Zuzana Irsova & Tomas Vlach, 2018. "Measuring the Income Elasticity of Water Demand: The Importance of Publication and Endogeneity Biases," Land Economics, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 94(2), pages 259-283.
    7. Maria A. García-Valiñas & Roberto Martínez-Francisco & González-Gómez, 2010. "Water affordability: alternativem measurement and explanatory Factors in Andalusia," Centre for Water Economics, Environment and Policy Papers 1014, Centre for Water Economics, Environment and Policy, Crawford School of Public Policy, The Australian National University.
    8. Schleich, Joachim & Hillenbrand, Thomas, 2019. "Water demand responds asymmetrically to rising and falling prices," Working Papers "Sustainability and Innovation" S03/2019, Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research (ISI).
    9. Renzetti, Steven & Dupont, Diane P. & Chitsinde, Tina, 2015. "An empirical examination of the distributional impacts of water pricing reforms," Utilities Policy, Elsevier, vol. 34(C), pages 63-69.
    10. Havranek, Tomas & Irsova, Zuzana & Vlach, Tomas, 2016. "Publication Bias in Measuring the Income Elasticity of Water Demand," MPRA Paper 75247, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    11. Acuña, Guillermo, 2017. "Elasticidades de la demanda de agua en Chile [Elasticities of water demand in Chile]," MPRA Paper 82916, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    12. Worthington, Andrew C., 2010. "Commercial and Industrial Water Demand Estimation: Theoretical and Methodological Guidelines for Applied Economics Research/Estimación de la demanda de agua comercial e industrial: pautas teóricas y m," Estudios de Economia Aplicada, Estudios de Economia Aplicada, vol. 28, pages 237-258, Agosto.
    13. Guillermo Ignacio Acuña & Cristián Echeverría & Alex Godoy & Felipe Vásquez, 2020. "The role of climate variability in convergence of residential water consumption across Chilean localities," Environmental Economics and Policy Studies, Springer;Society for Environmental Economics and Policy Studies - SEEPS, vol. 22(1), pages 89-108, January.
    14. Maria A. García‐Valiñas & Roberto Martínez‐Espiñeira & Francisco González‐Gómez, 2010. "Economics of Water Reform in the Murray-Darling Basin," Centre for Water Economics, Environment and Policy Papers 1005, Centre for Water Economics, Environment and Policy, Crawford School of Public Policy, The Australian National University.
    15. Arnaud Reynaud & Giulia Romano, 2018. "Advances in the Economic Analysis of Residential Water Use: An Introduction," Post-Print hal-01948631, HAL.
    16. Marie-Estelle Binet & Fabrizio Carlevaro & Michel Paul, 2014. "Estimation of Residential Water Demand with Imperfect Price Perception," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 59(4), pages 561-581, December.
    17. Xiaojia Bao, 2016. "Water, Electricity and Weather Variability in Rural Northern China," Working Papers 2014-07-02, Wang Yanan Institute for Studies in Economics (WISE), Xiamen University.
    18. Teresa Torregrosa & Martín Sevilla & Borja Montaño & Victoria López-Vico, 2010. "The Integrated Management of Water Resources in Marina Baja (Alicante, Spain). A Simultaneous Equation Model," Water Resources Management: An International Journal, Published for the European Water Resources Association (EWRA), Springer;European Water Resources Association (EWRA), vol. 24(14), pages 3799-3815, November.
    19. R. Quentin Grafton & Tom Kompas & Hang To & Michael Ward, 2009. "Residential Water Consumption: A Cross Country Analysis," Environmental Economics Research Hub Research Reports 0923, Environmental Economics Research Hub, Crawford School of Public Policy, The Australian National University, revised Aug 2009.
    20. Milan Ščasný & Šarlota Smutná, 2021. "Estimation of price and income elasticity of residential water demand in the Czech Republic over three decades," Journal of Consumer Affairs, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 55(2), pages 580-608, June.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:zbw:fisisi:s32007. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/isfhgde.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.