**6. Conclusions and implications for water demand management research**

In the preamble of this paper, it was indicated that most demand management literature and research focus on the use of economic and market-based incentives to curtail water demands. Indeed, there is a lot of scholarly work that supports that water demand can better be managed by economic incentives like pricing [59, 76, 104–106]. However, there is also growing concerns on the applicability of these instruments in a river basin context [56, 80, 107] as most of this research is conducted with a primary focus on either residential water demands or irrigation water demands.

While there is acknowledgement of property rights institutions as an instrument that can be used to manage water demands [56, 59, 60, 108], it was observed that little research work was done to understand the potential and applicability of property rights in this respect. This research, therefore, aimed at examining the role of property rights in managing this water demand as an alternative incentive to the economic instruments. The main argument was that property rights institutions guide the behaviour of resource users towards resource utilisation [24, 64, 89, 95]. By utilising the property rights theory [29], a proposition was made that the attributes of property rights would act as incentives and influence the patterns of behaviour of water resource users resulting in either reduction or increase in water use. The interaction between these property rights attributes and water users would result in a well-managed water demand scenario or another tragedy of the water resources commons.

Using evidence obtained in this study, property rights would be very significant in curtailing water demands in a catchment by acting as incentives in water resource utilisation, specifically by motivating water user users to conserve water. This finding presents a new dimension in water demand management research. Although these results are mostly inconclusive as regards the amount water savings property rights would have, efforts would be done to delve into understanding more on the incentive structure of property rights as regards water resource utilisation across the sectors in a catchment. By focusing on catchment wide water users, research would be able to incorporate dynamics that affect water user behaviour often ignored in studies focusing on residential water demand management.
