Determinants of the price response to residential water tariffs: meta-analysis and beyond

[EN] Meta-analyses synthesise available data on a phenomenon to get a broader understanding of its determinants. This work proposes a two-step methodology. 1) Based on a broad dataset of residential water demand studies, it builds a meta-regression model to estimate mean and standard deviation of price elasticity of residential water demand. 2) The resulting meta-model serves as a basis for implementing an approach that directly simulates the range of price elasticities resulting from policy-relevant combinations of its determinants. This simulation approach is validated using the available dataset. Despite evidence of low average price elasticity, the scenarios simulated using our meta-regression estimates show that increasing block rate tariffs are associated with higher price elasticity, and stresses the importance of using state-of-the-art methodologies when evaluating the price response. This completes other methodological insights obtained from the meta-analysis itself. Policy implications on the use of pricing to bring about water savings are discussed. (C) 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. The research for this paper was funded by the European Union research project FP7-ICT-619172 SmartH2O: an ICT Platform to leverage on Social Computing for the efficient management of Water Consumption. The authors would also like to thank Dr. Silvia Padula for helping to gather some of the primary studies. Marzano, R.; Rougé, C.; Garrone, P.; Grilli, L.; Harou, J.; Pulido-Velazquez, M. (2018). Determinants of the price response to residential water tariffs: meta-analysis and beyond. Environmental Modelling & Software. 101:236-248. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envsoft.2017.12.017