Recently, Professor Guoqian Chen of the Laboratory of Systems Ecology, College of Engineering has carried out an evaluation study on the water footprint of gaming industry in water scarce Macao. Along with his collaborator J. S. Li from King Abdulaziz University, their paper entitled “Water footprint assessment for service sector: A case study of gaming industry in water scarce Macao” has been published on journal Ecological Indicators in December 2014.

Link to the paper: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1470160X14000429

Water footprint is defined as the total volume of water needed to produce the goods or services consumed by a country, region, business or an individual person. Although numerous studies have been carried out to investigate the water footprint of different economies at global, national and regional scales, the research on water footprint of individual economic sector, which is the elementary part of each economy, is still lacking.

To fill the gap, this paper for the first time employs a hybrid method to evaluate the water footprint of gaming industry in water scarce Macao, based on the latest statistics and most exhaustive embodied water intensity databases.

The results show that direct water use only accounts for extremely small fraction of the gaming industry's water footprint, and the industry’s water demand is mainly satisfied by water embodied in imported goods and services.

Therefore, the authors pointed out that, as Macao's demand for water is growing, integrated plans including economic instruments and measures like reducing the scale of commission input and promoting efficiency would ease Macao's water pressure.

In addition, for overall management of gaming industry's impact on water resources, appropriate strategies to manage its commodities and services as well as the water resource consumption in a more sustainable way are urgently needed.

The study is believed to have brought along new perspectives on gaming industry's water management.

This work is supported by the Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 11272012).

Total water footprint and its structure.