Research Progress on Evaluating the Effectiveness of China’s Urban Tiered Water Pricing Policy
Main Article Content
Keywords
tiered water pricing, urban water resources, social equity
Abstract
China is a water-scarce country. The long-term free utilization of water resources in China has led to immense national water resource waste. As an effective economic instrument, tiered water pricing plays a valuable role in promoting the establishment of a water-saving society and adjusting water resource supply and demand in China. This paper focuses on the urban tiered water pricing policy. It analyzes the policy’s theoretical foundation, implementation effects, and the factors influencing policy effectiveness. Using a literature review method, this study synthesizes domestic and international research on China’s tiered water pricing policy and assesses the social equity of the policy’s effectiveness. The research finds that the tiered water pricing policy has shown good effectiveness in curbing residential, industrial, and agricultural water consumption. However, the implementation effect of the tiered water pricing policy is characterized by social unfairness. The effectiveness is influenced by natural factors, economic factors, policy formulation factors, and humanistic factors. The existing policy also suffers from an incomplete dynamic mechanism, and the tiered pricing structure struggles to differentiate between households with a large number of residents. Future tiered water pricing design should be formulated more meticulously, taking the aforementioned influencing factors into account. This includes factoring in elements such as urban population distribution, household income, and household size differences, establishing clear policy safeguards, regularly updating the water price policy, and creating a long-term dynamic mechanism.
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