A good understanding of the factors that influence household water demand is required to assist policymakers in implementing appropriate policy instruments that lead to sustainable municipal water use and ensure water security. This paper analyzes the factors affecting household water demand in South Africa to develop a better understanding of residential water demand in developing country contexts. The predominant focus in both the developed and developing country literature has been on determining the water price elasticity of household water demand. In terms of the price impacts on water demand in developing countries, and for poor households elsewhere, it is not only the impact of water price which affects household water demand. Given the low average incomes of these households, they usually spend most of their income on basic needs such as water, energy, and food. A water–energy–food price and consumption nexus thus exists for these households. In this paper, we examine this nexus by determining how changes in the prices of water, energy, and food affect household water consumption. Using three months of data from 527 households in the Mpumalanga province of South Africa, we estimate household water demand using ordinary least squares regression and two-stage least squares regression techniques with the use of instrumental variables. The results reveal that water, food, and energy prices have a significant negative effect on household water consumption. The tap water, food, and energy price elasticities ranged from −0.543 to −0.935, −0.174 to −0.403, and −0.072 to −0.163, respectively. This shows that policies aiming to alter water demand and improve water security for low-income households should not only focus on water prices but also the price of food and energy.

Residential water and energy use are linked in multiple ways. Various household activities and appliances involve both resources. Particularly in developing countries, households commonly apply energy-intensive coping strategies to deal with unreliable water supply. To understand the water-energy nexus at the private household level, here we introduce the concept of water-energy services (WES). We analyze household water and energy demand with a conceptual economic framework based on a household production model, and illustrate examples of the demand-side linkages with an empirical case study in India using an existing household-level dataset ([Formula: see text]). We conclude that household demand for one nexus resource depends not only on its own specific price, but also on the price for the other nexus resource as well as the opportunity cost of time, household income and income structure, other household characteristics, and production conditions for WES. Therefore, water and energy management should not be considered in isolation at the policy-making level. The economic framework developed here can serve as a conceptual basis and motivation for the empirical studies for developing sustainable water and energy management strategies.

Xinjiang had been suffering from acute water scarcity, which is an important constraint factor for its economic sustainability. Virtual water plays an important role in its sustainable development, and this paper tries to re-investigate the role of virtual water trade among the generalized trade framework in its sustainable development. The term generalized trade encompasses both physical and virtual trade. Physical trade refers to the transfer of commodities in monetary or barter form, and virtual trade refers to the transfer of inputs embodied in physical form (e.g., virtual water, energy, or land). It was in the water-scarce status, but it transported a net volume of about 13.1 billion tons of water to other economies, 94.6% of which was transported to other provinces. This phenomenon is contradictory to the comparative advantage theory. Water is a critical input in the production of commodities, but it is only one factor from the perspective of generalized trade. It is rich in energy resources but imports a large amount of external virtual energy from other provinces. Many labors come to Xinjiang both in physical and virtual senses. This situation indicates that generalized trade plays a more important role, and suggests that it should continue to improve its industrial system and optimize its business environment.

Agricultural intensification is a key driver of water pollution in many parts of the world. A frequent policy response is to implement mitigation measures in the context of agri-environmental schemes (AESs). We develop a hydro-economic modeling procedure to design cost-effective AESs to mitigate water pollution from nitrogen and phosphorus from cropland. Our procedure considers spatial heterogeneity of mitigation impacts and of costs of cropland management measures. It further takes into account in the optimization that AES participation is voluntary and farmers who may participate in an AES will select between different cropland management measures. We demonstrate how the procedure works by applying it to the Baishahe watershed in Shanxi Province, China. As a result, we obtain a cost-effective AES with a set of cropland management measures and the associated payment levels that are able to achieve weighted minimized nitrogen and phosphorus loads in the watershed for different budgets. We find, for example, that a cost-effective AES for a budget of 100,000[Formula: see text]RMB consists of the two measures of implementing a filter strip of 5[Formula: see text]m and reducing chemical fertilizers by 25% for which the farmers receive payments of 134[Formula: see text]RMB and 88[Formula: see text]RMB, respectively, which induces the reduction of nitrogen by 6.9% and phosphorus by 7.8%.

Environmental economists have long been interested in the relationship between policy enforcement, technological progress, and economic growth. A multidirectional process exists where factors such as the economy, policy, technology, and environment interactively work. Based on the balanced panel data of 261 prefecture-level cities in China from 2000 to 2020, this study innovatively examines the diversified channels in the policy–technology system within the structural equation modeling framework. Conclusions can be drawn as follows. First, the policy uncertainties curb the technological improvement in the water sector, particularly in southern Chinese cities. Second, the incubation and adoption of water technology are closely intertwined, significantly affecting water quality. By clarifying the interaction of the factors in water technology diffusion, this study provides a comprehensive framework to investigate China’s water economics and policy uncertainties.

With growing pressure on groundwater resources in developing countries, water-conserving technologies (WCTs) seem to be an especially promising method of both poverty alleviation and agricultural adaptation to risks associated with climate change. While the private benefits of technology adoption are increasingly understood by both farmers and policymakers, the public benefits — or positive spillovers that additionally affect non-adopters and adopters alike — are often overlooked, thus understating the case for investment in their development and promotion. This paper explores the physical and socioeconomic conditions that shape the distribution of these benefits locally and across landscapes, pointing to the importance of integrating spatial relationships and underlying economic conditions into their estimation. We focus on India — the world’s largest user of groundwater — and build a spatially-sensitive hydroeconomic model to capture the dynamics of public water availability and extraction costs due to WCT adoption. We calibrate our model using household-plot level survey data and randomized control trial impact estimates from a rollout of WCTs in the Indo-Gangetic Plains. Geo-referenced borewell locations and a novel farmer pumping survey allow us to scale results to the landscape level. Results show that public benefits from WCT adoption initially occur primarily via reduced well interference and that clustering of WCTs in dense, low-income farming areas can generate the highest mix of private and public benefits. With most farmers in this study boring wells and pumping water without local spatial consideration, policymakers with the dual objectives of climate change adaptation and poverty alleviation may consider these dual environmental and economic water-conserving agricultural technology benefit spillovers.

In this paper, we estimate the resource costs of agricultural water use and simulate the environmental and economic impacts of their recovery. To this end, we develop a socio-hydrology-inspired, dynamic, protocol-based modular approach that interconnects economic and hydrologic modeling via two-way feedback protocols. The hydrologic module is populated with the AQUATOOL model, the Decision Support System used in Spanish river basins; while the economic module is populated with an ensemble of four Mathematical Programming Models (MPMs) that capture human agency and responses. This allows us to sample uncertainty and provide a range for resource costs estimates and the environmental and economic impacts of their recovery, rather than a point estimate. Methods are illustrated with an application to the Órbigo Catchment, a sub-basin of the Douro River Basin in Spain. Our results suggest significant resource costs (a 34–62% increase in existing charges, depending on the model) with non-trivial impacts on income (2–27% reduction) and the environment (water savings range between 6% and 69%), while the impact on tax revenue is ambiguous yet potentially significant (between [Formula: see text]2.3 million EUR/year and 5 million EUR/year).