Do Consumers React to the Shape of Supply? Water Demand Under Heterogeneous Price Structures (original) (raw)
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Water demand equations are estimated using the most current American Water Works Association (1984) survey of 430 (of 600 largest) U.S. utilities. The data set was augmented by monthly rainfall and temperature data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's climatological data. Demographic data were obtained from the U.S. Department of Commerce (1988). Besides the usual endogeneity problems involving block price structures this paper also examines the possible endogeneity of conservation and education programs. Three types of models were used: a marginal price model, an average price model, and Shin's (1985) price perception model. The results generally show that price elasticity is higher in the South and the West. Conservation does not appear to reduce water use, but public education appears to have reduced water usage in the West. The Shin (1985) tests in this study indicate that consumers react more to average than marginal prices in all regions. 5 analyzes the results. Section 6 concludes the paper.
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Microeconomic theory predicts that people decrease consumption when price increases, the magnitude of the effect depending on price elasticity. The law of demand, however, implicitly assumes that consumers know prices, an assumption that is not always satisfied in markets with ex-post billing. When prices are not transparent, elasticity estimates are potentially lower than their full information potential. Evidence of low price elasticity abounds in residential water demand studies, limiting the effectiveness and desirability of using price signals as a conservation tool. We hypothesize that resident's sluggish response to price is partly due to the absence of price information on water bills. Differences in the informational content of bills are documented for the first time on the basis of sample bills collected from 383 utilities across the United States. A standard aggregate water demand model is augmented with qualitative variables describing differences in billing information, allowing such variables to affect the intensity with which consumers respond to price signals. We find no evidence that non-price information items affect price elasticity but find a statistically significant effect in the case of price-related information; in our sample, price elasticity increases by thirty percent or more when price information is given on the bill.
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The aim of this article is to provide derived estimates of the price elasticity of demand for water for residential urban consumers in Australia over the years 2005/06 to 2016/17. The results of the study indicate that higher water and sewerage prices, bundled together, are associated with lower demand for water. The relationship, therefore, between the prices of water and sewerage and demand for water is a negative one. This relationship, however, is a relatively inelastic one, that is a large change in price is required before there is much of a change in demand for water. With the supply of water in most Australian urban centers are controlled by monopoly suppliers this means that there is some scope for water restrictions to negate this market power.
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Changes in water availability, and hence price, are expected to be amongst the most disruptive effects of climate change in many parts of the world. Understanding the capacity of society or consumers to adapt to such changes requires understanding the responsiveness of water demand to price changes. We estimate the price elasticity of residential water demand in Phoenix, Arizona, which is likely to be strongly impacted by climate change. Most existing approaches to the estimation of water demand functions have limited capacity to isolate the effect of price on water consumption where there is little variation in water price. A recent study by attempts to address this issue by using differences in consumption levels, and weather-related characteristics to isolate the price effect on water demand, and by using a constant term in a differenced regression model. We also estimate a differenced regression model, but include direct measures of changes in water prices. This inclusion successfully isolates the price effect on water demand, and enables us to distinguish between the short-and long-run price elasticity of water demand, and hence the short-and long-run adaptation to changes in water availability.