At the height of the Millennium Drought in Australia, there was unprecedented interest in the role of demand‐side management in the urban water sector. Conservation tariffs, where water users pay significantly less by reducing consumption, were mooted in some policy circles, although they were never seriously trialled. The easing of the drought was also accompanied by a new era of economic regulation, where monopoly water suppliers are increasingly encouraged to deliver services valued by customers. This trend has been embraced in Victoria, where the Essential Services Commission effectively rewards water businesses that match their services against customer expectations. This article explores whether customers and business managers hold similar priorities for water services by using a Best‐Worst Scaling experiment. The experiment includes a conservation tariff, and findings suggest that customers enjoy relatively higher utility from these tariffs, sustainability, water restrictions and small‐scale projects compared to the services emphasised by managers. The study exposes the general difficulty of water businesses matching their customers’ preferences, especially if there is heterogeneity in preferences and given businesses must simultaneously deliver on many other fronts.

中文翻译：

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使客户的关税改革偏好与管理者的变革意愿相匹配：澳大利亚的仅按体积收费的案例

在澳大利亚千年干旱的高峰期，人们对需求方管理在城市水务部门中的作用产生了空前的兴趣。在一些政策圈中，有人提出了保护水价，即用水户通过减少用水量而大大降低了水价，尽管从来没有认真试用过。干旱的缓解还伴随着新的经济法规时代，在这个时代，越来越多的垄断水供应商被鼓励提供客户所重视的服务。维多利亚州已经接受了这种趋势，基本服务委员会有效地奖励了与客户期望相匹配的水务业务。本文通过使用最佳-最差扩展实验来探索客户和业务经理是否对水服务拥有相似的优先级。该实验包括一项保护性关税，研究结果表明，与管理者所强调的服务相比，客户在这些关税，可持续性，用水限制和小型项目中享有相对较高的效用。该研究揭示了自来水企业满足其客户偏好的一般困难，尤其是在偏好存在异质性且给定企业必须同时在许多其他方面交付的情况下。