| Abstract: | Wastewater treatment services are bound to rather strict environmental regulations. However, as the broad range of wastewater expenditure of communities shows, there is room for discretionary policies of communities. The current paper explores wastewater treatment expenditure of Austrian communities by employing a cross-section econometric model. To a significant extent, demographic, geographic and technological variables determine wastewater expenditure with only little possibilities to influence these expenditure. Yet there is also some limited room for short-term discretionary policies with respect to the organisational setting. If communities can organise their wastewater treatment in a collective way, they can influence their expenditure significantly. |
