Buyback auctions to reduce groundwater extraction for agriculture have been used in many real world scenarios but, to date, the impact of different auction design mechanisms for this context has not been comprehensively studied. Here, three auction design issues are studied: (i) framing the overall objective as either a budget constrained auction or a water target auction; (ii) the severity of budget and target constraints; and (iii) the role of a spatially explicit environmental benefit index. To answer the research questions an agent-based optimisation model is developed for the most important groundwater system in Western Australia. The results show that a budget constrained auction performs as well or better than a target constrained auction and that use of an environmental benefit index improves auction efficiency.

中文翻译：

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为环保目的回购地下水的拍卖：哪种设计表现更好？

用于减少农业地下水开采的回购拍卖已在许多现实世界场景中使用，但迄今为止，尚未全面研究不同拍卖设计机制对这种情况的影响。在这里，研究了三个拍卖设计问题：(i) 将总体目标确定为预算受限拍卖或水资源目标拍卖；(ii) 预算和目标限制的严重程度；(iii) 空间显性环境效益指数的作用。为了回答研究问题，我们为西澳大利亚最重要的地下水系统开发了一个基于代理的优化模型。结果表明，预算约束拍卖的表现与目标约束拍卖一样好或更好，并且环境效益指数的使用提高了拍卖效率。