Do water-saving policies improve water-use technical efficiency? Evidence from the water-receiving cities of China’s South–North Water Transfer Project

ABSTRACT

China has implemented a series of water-saving policies in response to the growing threat of water shortages. However, it remains unclear whether these water-saving policies, which aim to reduce water-use intensity, will actually improve water-use technical efficiency. This study scrutinizes water-use technical efficiency within an extended human-environment framework by using the case of China's South–North Water Transfer Project (SNWTP). An improved estimation method for water-use technical efficiency based on stochastic frontier analysis is adopted to empirically investigate the variations in water-use intensity and technical efficiency in the SNWTP's water-receiving cities. This study argues that there is no definitive link between improvements in water-use technical efficiency and decreases in water-use intensity, and thus water-saving policies oriented toward reducing water-use intensity do not necessarily increase water-use technical efficiency. In addition, achieving the goals of water-saving policies by reducing water use intensity alone remains challenging and requires improving the water-use technical efficiency caused by endogenous technological progress. Finally, setting a unified target to reduce water-use intensity leads to inequitable sharing of water-saving tasks between regions, resulting in conflicts of interest among government bureaucracies.

KEYWORDS:

• Water-saving policy
• South–North Water Transfer Project
• STIRPAT
• water-receiving city
• water-use technical efficiency
• water-use intensity

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

The authors are grateful for the financial support of this research provided by the National Natural Science Foundation of China [72074119 and 71774088] and the Australian Research Council for funding [DP170104138].

Notes on contributors

Jichuan Sheng

Dr. Jichuan Sheng is currently a full professor at Hohai University in China and an honorary fellow at the University of Melbourne in Australia. His research examines the human aspects of environmental change, green innovation, and water governance.

Michael Webber

Dr. Michael Webber is Professor Emeritus at the School of Geography, University of Melbourne. Michael does research on the social and economic transformation of China, including the implications of economic change for workers, rural social and economic change and environmental (especially water) management.