Factors Affecting Domestic Water Consumption on the Spanish Mediterranean Coastline

Abstract

During the last decades in the Spanish Mediterranean coastline there has been a great development of low density urban area, as well as a change of the sociodemographic structures, especially in the municipalities that have developed a residential tourism model. Likewise, urban and tourist development have stressed the balance between the availability of water resources and urban water demands, generating situations of scarcity which may be aggravated by climate change. This study identifies the determinants of water consumption in the Spanish Mediterranean coastline, focusing on the variables related to urban land uses, socioeconomic and sociodemographic variables at the municipal level using an ordinary least square (OLS) and a geographically weighted regression (GWR) model. The GWR model results substantially improved the results of the OLS model, explaining 88.27 percent of the variance in domestic water consumption and solving the spatial autocorrelation problem of some independent variables. The most influential variables include the percentage of second homes or the percentage of residential properties with swimming pools at municipal level. These characteristics must be considered to develop demand management policies and an updated water planning to ensure urban supply in a future with less available water resources.

Factors influencing residential water consumption in Wallonia, Belgium

“…In contrast to March and Saurí (2010), who found urban density is the most critical variable to explain water consumption, the effects of density in this study, though significant, hardly improve the adjusted R-square of the model (Table 2). Previous studies often found that higher urban density reduces water demand mainly through smaller lot sizes (Fox et al, 2009;Villar-Navascués and Pérez-Morales, 2018). Even though lot size was not available in this study, after controlling for similar factors such as living area and the presence of (a) pool(s) or garden(s), the remaining effect of densities becomes marginal.…”

Domestic Water Consumption and Its Influencing Factors in the Yellow River Basin Based on Logarithmic Mean Divisia Index and Decoupling Theory

“…Industrial water consumption is primarily determined by economic growth, industrial structural adjustments, and technological progress. Existing studies on domestic water use mainly focus on household domestic water use and its influencing factors at the micro level [7,19,21,[29][30][31][32][33]. Research data were always obtained through questionnaire survey, water-use diary, field observation and interview [34].…”

The Influence of Climate and Land-Cover Scenarios on Dam Management Strategies in a High Water Pressure Catchment in Northeast Spain

“…This substantial seasonal imbalance between water availability and demand has led to the development of a very dense network of dams and hydraulic infrastructure. Further, the Spanish Mediterranean coast has generally shown an increase in urban and tourist-related development in recent decades causing additional water scarcity, impacts that are likely to be intensified by climate change [25]. Under this socioeconomic context, the Mediterranean regions should take special care in the management of their water resources, as shown in [26,27].…”