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In Southern Europe numerous areas suffer water scarcity. For public policies to be effective, a thorough study of water users must be conducted. This paper aims to analyse the key factors that influence the decision of industrial users in urban areas when choosing between withdrawing water from underground sources or using water supplied through the public network. Using a database of industrial firms in Zaragoza (Spain) the proportion of water drawn from wells is considered as the dependent variable of a fractional response model. This methodology provides an original contribution to the field of behavioural analysis of the industrial sector, enabling us to model industrial decisions on water sources. The results obtained show that the most significant decision-drivers are how the industries use the water, the firms' location and the accessibility of the different sources. Moreover, the findings indicate that firms use lower proportions of well water during the summer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we propose to answer the following questions: What does the adoption of water saving measures by Spanish households depend on? Which factors have the most influence on water saving behaviour? To this end we have conducted an empirical study in which a binary model (probit/logit) with interaction effects between city size, educational level and climatic area, along with other quantitative and qualitative variables, is estimated using household level data. The results of this estimation, together with the evaluation of probability changes that occur when any of the qualitative factors change, suggest that the level of income, the size of the city where the dwelling is, the educational level of the reference person and the climatic location of the city are factors that influence the attitude towards saving water. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The purpose of this work is to evaluate the consequences of tariffs that use sliding-scale prices to assess the aggregated consumption of households in terms of equity. Particular attention is paid to special tariffs for larger households. The study analyzes the tariffs that were in effect in Spanish provincial capitals in 2008. The results confirm that there are equity problems associated with the size of the household, particularly regarding large households. Furthermore, the results show that a large part of the special tariffs that have been adopted do not solve that equity problem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents an empirical study to estimate the urban residential water demand in Zaragoza, Spain; this allows the testing of the short-run sensitivity of water demand to changes in a set of socioeconomic variables and especially in prices. A residential water demand model is estimated using a dynamic panel data technique. Furthermore, three water demand equations have been proposed and two alternative process specifications are applied. The empirical application suggests that the linear demand specification is the most adequate. Finally, the results indicate that domestic demands are inelastic with respect to price. This paper was prepared under Project SEJ2005-06069/ECON, financed by the Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]