Economic analysis of sustainable water use: A review of worldwide research

Abstract Water use and sustainable development are pressing issues that affect the overall global system. The economic analysis of water use has been receiving increasing attention among researchers and has become an important field of research in recent decades. The main objective of this paper is to analyse the worldwide dynamics of economic studies on water use in the last 30 years and especially on its sustainable use. A systematic review and a bibliometric analysis were developed to sample 1022 articles. The results indicate that the number of articles published has increased steadily each year, especially in the last five years, accounting for 45% of all the articles. The three most prominent journals in this field are Journal of Cleaner Production, Resources Conservation and Recycling and Ecological Economics. Of the articles studied, 23.5% were published in the United States, 13.6% in Australia and 8.1% in China. The need to create comprehensive and multidisciplinary frameworks of analysis has been detected in order to develop holistic models for a sustainable management of water resources. These models must analyse supply and demand, non-conventional water sources and a global approach to the questions of water. In short, this study is that it can be stated that the economic analysis of water use is a field of research which is growing worldwide, and within this research field the analysis devoted to sustainability is increasingly relevant. The findings of this study can be useful to water use researchers by providing an overview of the worldwide research on this line of investigation.