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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Environ. Sci.
Sec. Water and Wastewater Management
Volume 12 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fenvs.2024.1413423

Can Agricultural Water Rights Trading Promote Intensive and Economical Utilization of Water Resources in China?--Based on difference-in-differences model

Provisionally accepted
Rong Lili Rong Lili *Cheng Xin Cheng Xin *
  • University of Jinan, Jinan, China

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Improving the level of intensive and economical utilization of water resources is an important measure related to water resources security and food security. Based on China's provincial panel data from 2015 to 2021, this study uses a difference-in difference(DID) model to examine the effects of the agricultural water rights trading on intensive and economical utilization of water resources. We find that agricultural water rights trading can significantly promote the intensive and economical utilization of water resources at 1% level, and after a series of robustness tests, the result is still valid. Further analysis indicates that agricultural water rights trading can promote intensive and economical utilization of water resources by significantly reducing agricultural water consumption at 1% level and reducing the proportion of agricultural water consumption at 5% level to optimize water use structure. Moreover, in the regions with scarce water resources, strong constraints on water resources, more farmland water conservancy construction and higher economic development level, the promotion effect of agricultural water rights trading on the intensive and economical use of water resources is more significant. This study provides evidence for evaluating the effects of China's agricultural water rights trading policy and offers new ideas and experiences for improving China's water resource utilization efficiency.The marginal contribution of this article may have the following three points: First, this paper clearly distinguishes the intensive conservation of water resources, constructs the evaluation index system respectively, and supplements the existing literature on the measurement of the intensive and economical utilization of water resources. Second, this paper analyzes the transmission path of agricultural water rights trading to improve the level of intensive and economical utilization of water resources, it enriches the research of related transmission mechanism. Third, the heterogeneity of the influence of different regional condition on the level of intensive and economical utilization of water resources is deeply discussed, in order to improve the relevant policies.

    Keywords: irrigation, PSM-DID, water consumption structure, Water Management, Water resource constraint

    Received: 07 Apr 2024; Accepted: 19 Sep 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Lili and Xin. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence:
    Rong Lili, University of Jinan, Jinan, China
    Cheng Xin, University of Jinan, Jinan, China

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.