Cross-sectional study of factors influencing the residential water demand in Bangalore

ABSTRACT

The study investigates the influences of demographic and infrastructural covariates that drive the household water demand in the 198 municipal wards of Bangalore, India. In contrast to previous studies that rely on direct household income data, this study captures the household income effect on water demand with a set of proxy income covariates such as average built-up area, proportion of households in different income categories, per capita park area, population density, road infrastructure, etc. The macro-level demand study uses cross-sectional data comprising of dependent and independent variables of 198 municipal wards of Bangalore in the month of July 2015. Linear and non-linear demand models estimate the influence of factors using the ordinary least squares (OLS) method and results are compared. Results indicate that average built-up area, proportion of high income households and per capita park area positively influence the water demand while the number of members per household negatively influences water demand.

KEYWORDS:

• Water demand management
• urban water
• geographic information system (GIS)

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Supplementary material

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Notes

1. Household refers to a group of individuals staying together as a family unit.

2. Note that proportion of high income households ($x_3$) is a direct estimate of income obtained by official census data and the average built-up area ($x_7$) is an indirect or proxy income variable derived from open street maps.