A nonexperimental evaluation's validity can be threatened by a number of factors that are well
known in the program evaluation literature. This article illustrates some of the internal validity
threats that arise when evaluating the impact of water conservation programs implemented
during a drought. These include differential response to the drought because of imbalance in the
control and participantgroup characteristics, self-selection bias, and the impact of measurement
error. This article shows how to deal with these problems in the context of water conservation
programs when high-quality disaggregate data are available.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
Acton, J.P., B.M. Mitchell, and R. Sohlberg.1980. Estimating residential electricity demand under declining-block tariffs: An econometric study using micro-data . Applied Economics12 (June): 145-61.
2.
Bamezai, A., and T.W. Chesnutt.1994. The 1992 city of San Diego residential water audit program: Evaluation of program outcomes and water savings. Los Angeles: Metropolitan Water District of Southern California.
3.
Bamezai, A., T.W. Chesnutt, J. Wiedmann, and M. Steirer.1994. How persistent are residential audit water savings? Evidence from San Diego's single-family audit program. Proceedings of the American Water Works Association (June: 555-67.
4.
Berk, R.A., C.J. LaCivita, K. Sredl, and T.F. Cooley.1981. Water shortage: Lessons in conservation from the great California drought, 1976-1977. MA: Abt Books.
5.
Berk, R.A., D. Schulman, M. McKeever, and H.E. Freeman.1993. Measuring the impact of water conservation campaigns in California. Climatic Change24 (July): 233-48.
6.
Billings, R.B., and D.E. Agthe.1980. Price elasticities for water: A case of increasing block rates. Land Economics56 (February): 73-84.
7.
Bloomfield, P.1976. Fourier analysis of time series: An introduction . New York: John Wiley.
8.
Chesnutt, T.W., and C.N. McSpadden.1991. A model-based evaluation of the Westchester water conservation program. Los Angeles: Metropolitan Water District of Southern California.
9.
Cook, T.D., and D.T. Campbell.1979. Quasi experimentation: Design and analysis issues for field settings. Chicago: Rand McNally.
10.
Department of Water Resources.1994. California water plan update. Bulletin no. 160-93 (October. Sacramento, CA: Department of Water Resources .
11.
Duan, N.1983. Smearing estimate: A nonparametric retransformation method . Journal of the American Statistical Association78 (September): 605-10.
12.
Foster, H.S., Jr., and B.R. Beattie.1979. Urban residential demand for water in the United States. Land Economics55 (February): 43-57.
13.
Goldberger, A.S.1968. The interpretation and estimation of Cobb-Douglas functions . Econometrica36 (July-October): 464-72.
14.
Hanke, S.H., and L. deMare.1982. Residential water demand: A pooled, time series, cross section study of Malmo, Sweden. Water Resources Bulletin18 (August): 621-5.
15.
Hausman, J.A.1978Specification tests in econometrics. Econometrica46 (November): 1251-71.
16.
Heckman, J.J., and V.J. Hotz.1989. Choosing among alternative nonexperimental methods for estimating the impact of social programs: The case of manpower training. Journal of the American Statistical Association84 (December): 862-74.
17.
Heckman, J.J., and R. Robb, Jr.1985. Alternative methods for evaluating the impact of interventions. Journal of Econometrics30 (October-November): 239-67.
18.
Judge, G.G., W.E. Griffiths, R.C. Hill, H. Lutkepohl, and T.-C. Lee.1985. The theory and practice of econometrics . 2d ed. New York: John Wiley.
19.
Kennedy, P.E.1981. Estimation with correctly interpreted dummy variables in semilogarithmic equations. American Economic Review71 (September): 801.
20.
Lyman, R.A.1992. Peak and off-peak residential water demand. Water Resources Research28 (September): 2159-67.
21.
Maidment, D.R., and S.P. Miaou.1986. Daily water use in nine cities. Water Resources Research22 (June): 845-51.
22.
Maidment, D.R., S.P. Miaou, and M.M. Crawford.1985. Transfer function models of daily urban water use. Water Resources Research21 (April): 425-32.
23.
Miaou, S.P.1990. A class of time series urban water demand models with nonlinear climatic effects. Water Resources Research29 (February): 169-78.
24.
Moffitt, R.1991. Program evaluation with nonexperimental data. Evaluation Review15 (June): 291-314.
25.
Moncur, J.E.T.1987. Urban water pricing and drought management. Water Resources Research23 (March): 393-8.
26.
Nieswiadomy, M.L.1992. Estimating urban residential water demand: Effects of price structure, conservation, and education. Water Resources Research28 (March): 609-15.
27.
Nieswiadomy, M.L., and D.J. Molina.1989. Comparing residential water demand estimates under decreasing and increasing block rates using household data . Land Economics65 (August): 280-9.
28.
Taub, A.J.1979. Prediction in the context of the variance-components model . Journal of Econometrics10 (April): 103-7.
