Water savings subsidy during 2015 drought in Korea

초록

To address water shortages arising from the 2015 drought in Korea, the water authority (K-water) implemented a water savings subsidy between October 2015 and January 2016. This policy incentivized reduced consumption by offering households a rebate for each unit of water saved compared to the same month in the previous year. The rate of subsidy was 1240 KRW/m3 (approximate to$1.10/m3) which was roughly 2.5-3 times larger than the water rate for the first block in most of municipalities. This study attempts to measure the effectiveness of the intervention and finds that it generated a roughly 4%-6% reduction in water use. We find that households consuming relatively more water (3rd and 4th quartiles in terms of baseline water consumption) reduced their use by 6.1% but households consuming relatively less water (1st quartile) reduced their use by 4%. Interestingly, there is little evidence that property value affects the reduction in water use with the intervention.

키워드