Considerations on water price incentives
Economic tools for water management

We won't go back over the many and varied studies on the price of water, nor its components, as this would merit a separate article. We will, however, discuss the incentive effect of water pricing on behavioral change.

It is assumed that, by raising the price to an optimal point, consumers (households, industry and agriculture) can be made to adopt environmentally virtuous behavior:

• lower consumption ;

• lower pollutant emissions.

However, the impact of volumetric pricing on the quantity of water consumed or pollution discharged is negligible when the total amount of the bill represents only a small proportion of a user's production costs or income. In theory, therefore, to be effective, the price charged must be sufficiently high. However, the effectiveness...