Driving factors of water use change based on production and domestic dimensions in Jiangsu, China

Water resource shortage has become a major bottleneck restricting the sustainable development of China's economy and society. Identifying the driving factors of water use is helpful to put forward suggestions of water-saving society construction. This paper takes Jiangsu province as example and adopts LMDI (Logarithmic Mean Divisia Index) method to decompose the driving factors of water use change. We find that the production intensity effect and the industrial structure effect are the two dominating factors that induce the decline of total water use. Economic development effect is the most important factor to promote the increase of total water use, and domestic intensity effect is the secondary factors except for 2000-2003 period. Population scale effect on the total water use is relatively weak. The domestic intensity effect is the primary factor to promote the increase of domestic water use; the urbanization effect is a secondary factor to promote the increase of domestic water use. Based on the research conclusions, the corresponding water-saving policy is put forward.