IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/juipol/v36y2015icp71-78.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Drivers of non-revenue water: A cross-national analysis

Author

Listed:
  • van den Berg, Caroline

Abstract

Reducing water losses is seen as key to sustainable water management, but turns out to be challenging. This paper applies a panel data analysis with fixed effects to assess the major drivers of non-revenue water, some of which are under the control of utilities and some of which are not. The analysis finds that the most important drivers are population density per kilometer of network and type of distribution network, which are mostly resulting from urbanization patterns which are factors mostly out of the control of the utility. Yet, low opportunity costs of water losses and high repair costs of water losses have an important adverse effect on water loss reduction. We also found that the country environment in which the utility operates has an important impact on non-revenue water levels.

Suggested Citation

  • van den Berg, Caroline, 2015. "Drivers of non-revenue water: A cross-national analysis," Utilities Policy, Elsevier, vol. 36(C), pages 71-78.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:juipol:v:36:y:2015:i:c:p:71-78
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jup.2015.07.005
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0957178715300138
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.jup.2015.07.005?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Céline Nauges & Caroline Berg, 2008. "Economies of density, scale and scope in the water supply and sewerage sector: a study of four developing and transition economies," Journal of Regulatory Economics, Springer, vol. 34(2), pages 144-163, October.
    2. Prieto, Ángel & Zofío, José Luis & Álvarez, Inmaculada, 2010. "Urban patterns, population density and optimal city dimension: The case of public infrastructure," Working Papers in Economic Theory 2010/08, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (Spain), Department of Economic Analysis (Economic Theory and Economic History).
    3. Serge Garcia & Alban Thomas, 2001. "The Structure of Municipal Water Supply Costs: Application to a Panel of French Local Communities," Journal of Productivity Analysis, Springer, vol. 16(1), pages 5-29, July.
    4. Francisco Sáez-Fernández & Francisco González-Gómez & Andrés Picazo-Tadeo, 2011. "Opportunity Costs of Ensuring Sustainability in Urban Water Services," International Journal of Water Resources Development, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 27(4), pages 693-708.
    5. Alexander Danilenko & Caroline van den Berg & Berta Macheve & L. Joe Moffitt, 2014. "The IBNET Water Supply and Sanitation Blue Book 2014 : The International Benchmarking Network for Water and Sanitation Utilities Databook," World Bank Publications - Books, The World Bank Group, number 19811.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Bako Kinga-Erzsebet & Fulop Arpad-Zoltan, 2017. "Profitability And Efficiency Analysis In Water And Sewerage Sector In Romania," Annals - Economy Series, Constantin Brancusi University, Faculty of Economics, vol. 4, pages 96-102, August.
    2. Reza Moasheri & Mohammadreza Jalili-Ghazizadeh, 2020. "Locating of Probabilistic Leakage Areas in Water Distribution Networks by a Calibration Method Using the Imperialist Competitive Algorithm," Water Resources Management: An International Journal, Published for the European Water Resources Association (EWRA), Springer;European Water Resources Association (EWRA), vol. 34(1), pages 35-49, January.
    3. Şişman, Eyüp & Kızılöz, Burak, 2020. "Trend-risk model for predicting non-revenue water: An application in Turkey," Utilities Policy, Elsevier, vol. 67(C).
    4. Sampaio, P.R.P. & Sampaio, R.S.R, 2020. "The challenges of regulating water and sanitation tariffs under a three-level shared-authority federalism model: The case of Brazil," Utilities Policy, Elsevier, vol. 64(C).
    5. Lim Jen Nee Jones & Daniel Kong & Boon Thong Tan & Puspavathy Rassiah, 2021. "Non-Revenue Water in Malaysia: Influence of Water Distribution Pipe Types," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(4), pages 1-16, February.
    6. Meireles, Inês & Sousa, Vitor & Matos, José Pedro & Cruz, Carlos Oliveira, 2023. "Determinants of water loss in Portuguese utilities," Utilities Policy, Elsevier, vol. 83(C).
    7. Libey, Anna & Adank, Marieke & Thomas, Evan, 2020. "Who pays for water? Comparing life cycle costs of water services among several low, medium and high-income utilities," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 136(C).
    8. Massoud Tabesh & Abbas Roozbahani & Bardia Roghani & Niousha Rasi Faghihi & Reza Heydarzadeh, 2018. "Risk Assessment of Factors Influencing Non-Revenue Water Using Bayesian Networks and Fuzzy Logic," Water Resources Management: An International Journal, Published for the European Water Resources Association (EWRA), Springer;European Water Resources Association (EWRA), vol. 32(11), pages 3647-3670, September.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. van den Berg, Caroline, 2014. "The drivers of non-revenue water : how effective are non-revenue water reduction programs ?," Policy Research Working Paper Series 6997, The World Bank.
    2. Walter, Matthias & Cullmann, Astrid & von Hirschhausen, Christian & Wand, Robert & Zschille, Michael, 2009. "Quo vadis efficiency analysis of water distribution? A comparative literature review," Utilities Policy, Elsevier, vol. 17(3-4), pages 225-232, September.
    3. Saal David S. & Arocena Pablo & Maziotis Alexandros & Triebs Thomas, 2013. "Scale and Scope Economies and the Efficient Vertical and Horizontal Configuration of the Water Industry: A Survey of the Literature," Review of Network Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 12(1), pages 93-129, March.
    4. Eiji Satoh, 2012. "Consolidation and Scale Economies in the Japanese Sewerage Industry," Global COE Hi-Stat Discussion Paper Series gd12-240, Institute of Economic Research, Hitotsubashi University.
    5. Carvalho, Pedro & Marques, Rui Cunha & Berg, Sanford, 2012. "A meta-regression analysis of benchmarking studies on water utilities market structure," Utilities Policy, Elsevier, vol. 21(C), pages 40-49.
    6. Andrés J. Picazo-Tadeo & Francisco González-Gómez & Marta Suárez-Varela, 2020. "Electoral opportunism and water pricing with incomplete transfer of control rights," Local Government Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 46(6), pages 1015-1038, November.
    7. Guerrini, Andrea & Romano, Giulia & Leardini, Chiara, 2018. "Economies of scale and density in the Italian water industry: A stochastic frontier approach," Utilities Policy, Elsevier, vol. 52(C), pages 103-111.
    8. Andrea Guerrini & Giulia Romano & Bettina Campedelli, 2013. "Economies of Scale, Scope, and Density in the Italian Water Sector: A Two-Stage Data Envelopment Analysis Approach," Water Resources Management: An International Journal, Published for the European Water Resources Association (EWRA), Springer;European Water Resources Association (EWRA), vol. 27(13), pages 4559-4578, October.
    9. Germà Bel, 2013. "Local government size and efficiency in capital-intensive services: what evidence is there of economies of scale, density and scope?," Chapters, in: Santiago Lago-Peñas & Jorge Martinez-Vazquez (ed.), The Challenge of Local Government Size, chapter 6, pages 148-170, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    10. Anne-Kathrin Faust & Andrea Baranzini, 2014. "The economic performance of Swiss drinking water utilities," Journal of Productivity Analysis, Springer, vol. 41(3), pages 383-397, June.
    11. Takuya Urakami & David Parker, 2011. "The Effects of Consolidation amongst Japanese Water Utilities," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 48(13), pages 2805-2825, October.
    12. Jean-Philippe Boussemart & Daouda Diakité & Raluca Parvulescu, 2023. "Performance of Water Utilities Evaluated from Different Stakeholders Perspectives: An Application to the Ivorian Sector," Journal of Productivity Analysis, Springer, vol. 60(1), pages 87-105, August.
    13. Tsegai, Daniel W. & Linz, Teresa & Kloos, Julia, 2009. "Economic analysis of water supply cost structure in the Middle Olifants sub-basin of South Africa," Discussion Papers 49926, University of Bonn, Center for Development Research (ZEF).
    14. B. James Deaton & Bethany Lipka, 2023. "Cooperation between First Nations and Municipalities: Do Water-Sharing Arrangements Improve Drinking Water Quality?," Land Economics, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 99(3), pages 433-457.
    15. Rhys Andrews & Malcolm J. Beynon, 2019. "Configurational Analysis of Access to Basic Infrastructure Services: Evidence from Turkish Provinces," The European Journal of Development Research, Palgrave Macmillan;European Association of Development Research and Training Institutes (EADI), vol. 31(5), pages 1341-1370, December.
    16. Bottasso, Anna & Conti, Maurizio, 2003. "Cost Inefficiency in the English and Welsh Water Industry: An Heteroskedastic Stochastic Cost Frontier Approach," Economics Discussion Papers 8872, University of Essex, Department of Economics.
    17. Reto Foellmi & Urs Meister, 2012. "Enhancing the Efficiency of Water Supply—Product Market Competition Versus Trade," Journal of Industry, Competition and Trade, Springer, vol. 12(3), pages 299-324, September.
    18. Céline Nauges & Dale Whittington, 2019. "Social Norms Information Treatments in the Municipal Water Supply Sector: Some New Insights on Benefits and Costs," Water Economics and Policy (WEP), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 5(03), pages 1-40, July.
    19. Garcia, Serge & Reynaud, Arnaud, 2004. "Estimating the benefits of efficient water pricing in France," Resource and Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 26(1), pages 1-25, March.
    20. Byrnes, Joel & Crase, Lin & Dollery, Brian & Villano, Renato, 2010. "The relative economic efficiency of urban water utilities in regional New South Wales and Victoria," Resource and Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 32(3), pages 439-455, August.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Non-revenue water; Utilities; Water supply; Benchmarking; Developing countries;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • H4 - Public Economics - - Publicly Provided Goods
    • L95 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Transportation and Utilities - - - Gas Utilities; Pipelines; Water Utilities
    • O57 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economywide Country Studies - - - Comparative Studies of Countries
    • Q25 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Renewable Resources and Conservation - - - Water

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:juipol:v:36:y:2015:i:c:p:71-78. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.sciencedirect.com/journal/utilities-policy .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.