An Empirical Study For Water Management Reformation Impact On Water Governance Efficiency Of Dongguan Local Government

In 2013, Dongguan is selected as first batch of national pilot city for water ecology development. In order to speed up the development process and solve severe water resource problems lead by isolated management, Dongguan has formulated pilot reformation programs for water resource management, which have been implemented by Dongguan municipal departments. Furthermore, the programs are carried out by 32 towns under Dongguan administration. Finally, jointed management is realized for urban and rural water affairs. With respect to the 32 towns, reformation is carried out in two aspects. First, Forestry and Water Affair Bureaus(FWAB) are set up in 13 center towns, while Forestry and Water Affair Offices(FWAO) are established in the other towns, and they jointly manage water affairs in each towns. Second, Water Project and Development Centers(WPDC) are established in each towns, which carry out planning, development, operation, maintaining and management of water project affairs. Reformations are carried out in managements of both water administration and water project, which is a creative breakthrough for local water management development. In order to verify effectiveness of the reformations, an empirical study is carried out based on panel data of water management performances before and after the reformations.Based on relative data of the 32 towns, panel data analyses are carried out, where water management performance is taken as dependent variable, establishment of FWAB, FWAO and WPDC are taken as independent variables, and other potential relative factors are considered as control variables. Fixed effect model is built, and multiple regression analysis is carried out. The results indicate that both FWAB and WPDC are positively correlated to water management performance, where WPDC has a greater influence. This proves effectiveness of water management reformations lead by local government. With respect to control variables, company number is negatively correlated to water management performance. Therefore, green production and more supervision should be carried out, so that water pollution can be controlled from the source.