Abstract
This paper aimed to construct an improved economic value estimation model (EVIW model) to assess the economic value of water, which plays an important role in the sustainable development of crop planting and irrigation design, especially in arid areas lacking water resources. Firstly, the current EVIW model was based upon improvements and adjustments to the cost-benefit analysis models of previous researchers. Then, to elaborate the whole process of estimation, an empirical study based on the data of Yanqi Basin was conducted. Subsequently, in order to verify the accuracy of the EVIW model, the economic value of irrigation water in this study area was estimated for a second time using the benefit sharing coefficient method. It was concluded that the estimated results of the current EVIW model are in good agreement with those of the traditional benefit sharing coefficient model. The estimation results of the economic value of irrigation water were found to be highly acceptable in terms of accuracy and scientific rigor.
Highlights
With the rapid development of society and continuous population growth, the water demands for the irrigation of arid areas is increasing
As the agricultural economy in arid areas is severely constrained by a shortage of water, the maximization of the value of irrigation water is of great significance to agricultural development in arid areas
The economic value of water resources usually refers to an added value of benefits that can be measured by the available existing currencies and created by per unit of water obtained from natural storage space
Summary
With the rapid development of society and continuous population growth, the water demands for the irrigation of arid areas is increasing. To avoid the above shortcomings, the current EVIW model was constructed by improving the NRTW model put forward by Schuster, which is based on cost-benefit analysis and intends to find the net returns of agricultural water use brought to the crops This method only deals with the whole economic value of agricultural water use, ignoring the differences between different kinds of crops. As the corresponding cost items for different kinds of crops are quite different, it was necessary to keep useful cost items and remove unnecessary ones In other words, it is an improved approach combining cost-benefit analysis with the cost decomposition method for assessing the economic value of irrigation water for different crops. 75% of irrigation efficiency was used as it is typical value in this research [14]
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