Performance evaluation of China's agricultural water rights markets (2002–2020)

The water rights market has been promoted in China since 2000. The lack of data and suitable evaluation methods impeded efforts to evaluate the market performance systematically. This research examines the characteristics, performance, and variation of China's agricultural water rights market (AWRM) on the basis of data from the field investigation, China Water Exchange, academic literature, and policy documents. We construct a comprehensive evaluation index system from the aspect of efficiency, fairness, and sustainability and quantitatively evaluate the performance of seven typical agricultural water markets in China. From 2002 to 2020, there were 1,752 cases of agricultural water transactions in China, with a total trading volume of 10.09 million m3. The market scale is increasing and the development of AWRM can be divided into three stages. Most agricultural water rights transactions happened in the west and the north. The average performance of typical AWRMs was poor. Typical water markets had the highest score for fairness and the lowest score for sustainability. Water markets in the humid areas performed the best, whereas the markets in the higher transaction level performed better. Water markets in areas with higher economic development had better performance.