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Irrigation technology and water rebound in China's agricultural sector
Author(s) -
Fang Lin,
Wu Fengping,
Yu Yantuan,
Zhang Lin
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
journal of industrial ecology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.377
H-Index - 102
eISSN - 1530-9290
pISSN - 1088-1980
DOI - 10.1111/jiec.13001
Subject(s) - divisia index , environmental science , irrigation , agriculture , agricultural economics , index (typography) , endowment , water conservation , farm water , china , economics , water resource management , geography , mathematics , energy intensity , statistics , ecology , philosophy , archaeology , epistemology , world wide web , computer science , energy (signal processing) , biology
Abstract By using the data of 30 provinces from 1998 to 2016 in China, this paper estimates the water rebound effect in the agricultural crop farming by combining Slacks‐based Measure (SBM‐based) of Malmquist Index and Logarithmic Mean Divisia Index (LMDI) method. We find that the average water rebound effect is 70.3%, implying that over two‐thirds of the water saving from irrigation technology improvement is offset by higher water consumption. We find evidence on the regional heterogeneity in terms of the magnitude of rebound: Southwest is the highest, whereas Northwest is the lowest. The heterogeneous rebound effect across regions is mainly due to the difference in water endowment and irrigation land availability. Our results indicate that irrigation technology improvement is not necessarily sufficient for achieving agricultural water conservation. In particular, the difference in natural geography conditions across regions needs to be considered in designing water conservation policies at a sub‐regional level.