Using survey data of 5000 households from Beijing, the authors identify the driving factors of household adoption of three water conservation behaviors by estimating probit models of household’s probability to make such choices. The results indicate that both price and environmental attitudes are strong predictors of adoption of household conservation behaviors. It is find that environmental attitudes are especially vital factors of three conservation behaviors in magnitude, while the price only plays an important role in the improvement and adoption of water efficient equipments. In terms of policy, it is not always effective to regard price as the incentives for household water conservation. However, environmental attitudes should be given its credit in the water management policy design.

This paper is a theoretical and empirical study to compare different policy evaluation models. Using sloping land conversion program (SLCP) in China as an example, the authors apply a matching regression model, a DID model and a matching DID model to estimate policy impact on households’ incomes. The authors also explain the bias reduction from the approach of combining DID and matching strategies and proves the matching DID model a more efficient regression method. The matching DID is also useful to be adopted to evaluate policies in other fields.