Abstract:In order to quantify the driving factors of the evolution of total water consumption in the provinces of the Yangtze River Economic Belt, the article analyzes the impact of R&D factors on total water consumption and improves the logarithmic mean Divisia index (LMDI) decomposition framework to decompose the evolution of total water consumption into water intensity effect, industrial structure effect, R&D efficiency effect, R&D scale effect, urbanization effect and population scale effect. The results show that for the Yangtze River Economic Belt, the R&D scale, urbanization and population scale are the factors contributing to the increase in total water consumption, with the R&D scale having the greatest contribution to the increase. The water intensity, R&D efficiency and industrial structure are the factors inhibiting the increase in total water consumption. The reduction in industry water intensity contributes to the decrease in total water consumption from the primary and secondary industries in turn. The decline in the primary industry’s proportion of GDP is the main source of the industrial restructuring that inhibits the increase in total water consumption. For the provinces in the Yangtze River Economic Belt, water intensity, R&D efficiency and industrial structure are the factors contributing to the decline in total water consumption. The R&D scale and urbanization are the main and secondary factors contributing to the increase in total water consumption, and there are differences in the contribution of population scale to both incremental effect and decremental effect on total water consumption. With the exception of Shanghai and Chongqing, the inhibiting effect of declining water intensity on the increase in total water consumption in the other provinces was mainly from the primary and secondary industries. The inhibiting effect of industrial restructuring on the increase in total water consumption is mainly due to the decline in the proportion of primary industry.