Impacts of socio-economic status and environmental attitudes of locals on E-flow allocation in Weihe River Basin, China

Abstract

There is an increasing awareness on importance of Environmental Flow (E-flow) in hydrology and watershed management, and environmental attitudes and socio-economic status of locals usually impact E-flow allocation levels. This study develops a system index to analyze these impacts based on a questionnaire survey on households in the Weihe River Basin, China, and four different E-flow allocation levels are considered in the analysis. The main results suggest that: 1) education is important to raise people's environmental awareness, 2) majority people accept to slightly increase water price and pollution fee to save water for E-flow, 3) potential water saving ability of locals is around 5 L/day per person, and 4) impacts of the situation and attitudes of local households are very limited on pollution dilution E-flow and sediment transportation E-flow. These analysis method and results are very supportive for water policy making concerning water saving, water pricing, subsidy and water allocation.

Keywords

• Environment flow
• Socio-economic status
• Environmental attitudes
• Impact index
• Household survey
• Weihe River