Wasserverbrauch privater Haushalte in Deutschland: Eine empirische Mikroanalyse.

Germany is a rather water-rich country. Nevertheless, climatic changes might make it necessary to use water resources carefully in the future, especially in times of drought. Against this background, this paper estimates the price elasticity of household water consumption, differentiating between households that have a rough knowledge of water prices and households that do not. Based on about 1,100 observations for households living in single-family houses and using the sum of cubic meter prices for water and wastewater as price measure, we find a moderate but statistically significantly non-zero price elasticity of -0.102. Households that have knowledge of water prices tend to exhibit a higher elasticity, while households without price knowledge do not show a statistically significant response in their water consumption. Prices can thus only be used to a limited extent as a means of controlling water consumption. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]