How State Mandates Moderate the Utility Ownership and Conservation Relationship in Municipal Water Governance: Evidence From U.S. Water Reuse Policies

Abstract

Municipalities are at the frontline of addressing water governance challenges, but local political pressures can stymie municipal conservation action. Some governance scholarship emphasizes the role of state-level policies in spurring municipal sustainability efforts, while other work argues local institutional arrangements—including municipal water utility ownership status—are drivers of local action. Guided by multilevel governance and institutional reform literature, we argue that state and local factors interactively drive municipal conservation policy adoption, using the case of water reuse policy. Statistical analysis of municipality survey data and state-level conservation regulations indicates that in states without conservation mandates, non-utility-owning municipalities are less likely to adopt water reuse measures compared to municipalities that own their utility. However, this negative local relationship decreases as state mandate stringency increases. These findings highlight the influence of both local and vertical institutional factors in municipal sustainability-related policy decisions and offer insights for future urban sustainability scholarship.