Irrigator preferences for water recovery budget expenditure in the Murray-Darling Basin, Australia

• Autores: Adam Loch, Sarah Ann Wheeler, P. C. Boxall, Darla Hatton-Macdonald, W. L. Adamowicz, Henning Bjornlund
• Localización: Land use policy: The International Journal Covering All Aspects of Land Use, ISSN 0264-8377, ISSN-e 1873-5754, Nº. 36, 2014, págs. 396-404
• Idioma: inglés
• Texto completo no disponible (Saber más ...)
• Resumen

  • This study presents results from a survey of southern Murray-Darling Basin irrigators about the percentage of funds they would allocate towards a variety of current and hypothetical trade-off choices for recovering environmental water. The findings, allowing for state-based differentials, suggest irrigators marginally prefer infrastructure expenditure above the sum of a set of market-based options (namely water entitlement purchasing, temporary water market products and exit-based packages). However, their infrastructure preference weighting is less than current budget expenditure, and use of market-based options has higher support from irrigators than current policy recognises. Further, analysis of past and current infrastructure and market-based water recovery expenditures reveals large price-per-megalitre disparities, which may be explained by diminishing marginal returns. Targeting expenditure in line with preferences of irrigators may result in increases in economic efficiency.