IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/enepol/v186y2024ics0301421524000363.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Sustainable lifestyle: Quantification and determining factors analysis of household carbon footprints in Japan

Author

Listed:
  • Huang, Liqiao
  • Yoshida, Yoshikuni
  • Li, Yuan
  • Cheng, Nan
  • Xue, Jinjun
  • Long, Yin

Abstract

Household consumption acts as a critical driver of socio-economic development. However, escalating consumption needs, propelled by rising living standards, underscore the urgency of transitioning to low-carbon household consumption patterns. The environmental footprint of households extends beyond direct emissions from domestic energy use; it encompasses indirect impacts across the lifecycle of various products and services. This reality necessitates adopting a comprehensive approach to evaluate these impacts. Here, we fill a gap in existing research by leveraging Japan, 2010 National Consumption Survey data, examining a sample of 17,733 households to discern key factors contributing to higher carbon footprints. Through the Embodied Energy and Emission Intensity Data for Japan Using Input-Output Tables (3EID), we conducted a detailed analysis of carbon footprints in multiple expenditure categories, revealing that energy consumption, particularly electricity, is the primary driver of household carbon emissions, closely followed by the food sector, including grains, aquatic products, meats, and dairy. Our findings indicate a direct correlation between household income and carbon footprint, revealing that lifestyle divergences, such as transport, meat, and dining out, explain for variations in emissions. These insights provide the basis for developing targeted strategies aimed at household decarbonization, thereby contributing to sustainable and environmentally responsible consumption patterns.

Suggested Citation

  • Huang, Liqiao & Yoshida, Yoshikuni & Li, Yuan & Cheng, Nan & Xue, Jinjun & Long, Yin, 2024. "Sustainable lifestyle: Quantification and determining factors analysis of household carbon footprints in Japan," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 186(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:enepol:v:186:y:2024:i:c:s0301421524000363
    DOI: 10.1016/j.enpol.2024.114016
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421524000363
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.enpol.2024.114016?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Yulin Liu & Min Zhang & Rujia Liu, 2020. "The Impact of Income Inequality on Carbon Emissions in China: A Household-Level Analysis," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(7), pages 1-22, March.
    2. Jiang, Yida & Long, Yin & Liu, Qiaoling & Dowaki, Kiyoshi & Ihara, Tomohiko, 2020. "Carbon emission quantification and decarbonization policy exploration for the household sector - Evidence from 51 Japanese cities," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 140(C).
    3. Arnold Tukker & Maurie J. Cohen & Klaus Hubacek & Oksana Mont, 2010. "The Impacts of Household Consumption and Options for Change," Journal of Industrial Ecology, Yale University, vol. 14(1), pages 13-30, January.
    4. Tantiwatthanaphanich, Thanapan & Shao, Xuan & Huang, Liqiao & Yoshida, Yoshikuni & Long, Yin, 2022. "Evaluating carbon footprint embodied in Japanese food consumption based on global supply chain," Structural Change and Economic Dynamics, Elsevier, vol. 63(C), pages 56-65.
    5. Keisuke Nansai & Shigemi Kagawa & Yasushi Kondo & Sangwon Suh & Rokuta Inaba & Kenichi Nakajima, 2009. "Improving The Completeness Of Product Carbon Footprints Using A Global Link Input-Output Model: The Case Of Japan," Economic Systems Research, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 21(3), pages 267-290.
    6. David Mark Dror, 2018. "Estimating Willingness-to-Pay for Health Insurance Among Rural Poor in India by Reference to Engel’s Law," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Financing Micro Health Insurance Theory, Methods and Evidence, chapter 7, pages 139-149, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    7. Shiraki, Hiroto & Matsumoto, Ken'ichi & Shigetomi, Yosuke & Ehara, Tomoki & Ochi, Yuki & Ogawa, Yuki, 2020. "Factors affecting CO2 emissions from private automobiles in Japan: The impact of vehicle occupancy," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 259(C).
    8. Meng, Jing & Zhang, Zengkai & Mi, Zhifu & Anadon, Laura Diaz & Zheng, Heran & Zhang, Bo & Shan, Yuli & Guan, Dabo, 2018. "The role of intermediate trade in the change of carbon flows within China," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 76(C), pages 303-312.
    9. Zhang, Yimeng & Wang, Feng & Zhang, Bing, 2023. "The impacts of household structure transitions on household carbon emissions in China," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 206(C).
    10. Eiji Yamamura, 2014. "Trust in government and its effect on preferences for income redistribution and perceived tax burden," Economics of Governance, Springer, vol. 15(1), pages 71-100, February.
    11. Heran Zheng & Yin Long & Richard Wood & Daniel Moran & Zengkai Zhang & Jing Meng & Kuishuang Feng & Edgar Hertwich & Dabo Guan, 2022. "Author Correction: Ageing society in developed countries challenges carbon mitigation," Nature Climate Change, Nature, vol. 12(6), pages 593-593, June.
    12. Huang, Liqiao & Long, Yin & Chen, Jundong & Yoshida, Yoshikuni, 2023. "Sustainable lifestyle: Urban household carbon footprint accounting and policy implications for lifestyle-based decarbonization," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 181(C).
    13. Dominik Wiedenhofer & Dabo Guan & Zhu Liu & Jing Meng & Ning Zhang & Yi-Ming Wei, 2017. "Unequal household carbon footprints in China," Nature Climate Change, Nature, vol. 7(1), pages 75-80, January.
    14. Long, Yin & Yoshida, Yoshikuni & Zhang, Runsen & Sun, Lu & Dou, Yi, 2018. "Policy implications from revealing consumption-based carbon footprint of major economic sectors in Japan," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 119(C), pages 339-348.
    15. Kjartan Steen-Olsen & Richard Wood & Edgar G. Hertwich, 2016. "The Carbon Footprint of Norwegian Household Consumption 1999–2012," Journal of Industrial Ecology, Yale University, vol. 20(3), pages 582-592, June.
    16. Heran Zheng & Yin Long & Richard Wood & Daniel Moran & Zengkai Zhang & Jing Meng & Kuishuang Feng & Edgar Hertwich & Dabo Guan, 2022. "Ageing society in developed countries challenges carbon mitigation," Nature Climate Change, Nature, vol. 12(3), pages 241-248, March.
    17. Weber, Christopher L. & Matthews, H. Scott, 2008. "Quantifying the global and distributional aspects of American household carbon footprint," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 66(2-3), pages 379-391, June.
    18. Zhang, Shaobin & Shi, Baofeng & Ji, Hao, 2023. "How to decouple income growth from household carbon emissions: A perspective based on urban-rural differences in China," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 125(C).
    19. Shigetomi, Yosuke & Matsumoto, Ken'ichi & Ogawa, Yuki & Shiraki, Hiroto & Yamamoto, Yuki & Ochi, Yuki & Ehara, Tomoki, 2018. "Driving forces underlying sub-national carbon dioxide emissions within the household sector and implications for the Paris Agreement targets in Japan," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 228(C), pages 2321-2332.
    20. Li, Xi & Ouyang, Zhigang & Zhang, Qiong & Shang, Wen-long & Huang, Liqiao & Wu, Yi & Gao, Yuning, 2022. "Evaluating food supply chain emissions from Japanese household consumption," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 306(PB).
    21. Soytas, Ugur & Sari, Ramazan & Ewing, Bradley T., 2007. "Energy consumption, income, and carbon emissions in the United States," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 62(3-4), pages 482-489, May.
    22. Menggen Chen, 2022. "Engel’s law in China: Some new evidence," Review of Development Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 26(3), pages 1640-1662, August.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Huang, Liqiao & Long, Yin & Chen, Jundong & Yoshida, Yoshikuni, 2023. "Sustainable lifestyle: Urban household carbon footprint accounting and policy implications for lifestyle-based decarbonization," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 181(C).
    2. Tantiwatthanaphanich, Thanapan & Shao, Xuan & Huang, Liqiao & Yoshida, Yoshikuni & Long, Yin, 2022. "Evaluating carbon footprint embodied in Japanese food consumption based on global supply chain," Structural Change and Economic Dynamics, Elsevier, vol. 63(C), pages 56-65.
    3. Xu, Zhongwen & Huang, Liqiao & Liao, Maolin & Xue, Jinjun & Yoshida, Yoshikuni & Long, Yin, 2022. "Quantifying consumption-based carbon emissions of major economic sectors in Japan considering the global value chain," Structural Change and Economic Dynamics, Elsevier, vol. 63(C), pages 330-341.
    4. Gao, Xue & Chen, Xuan & Liu, Lan-Cui, 2024. "Exploring the determinants of the evolution of urban and rural household carbon footprints inequality in China," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 185(C).
    5. Pottier, Antonin, 2022. "Expenditure elasticity and income elasticity of GHG emissions: A survey of literature on household carbon footprint," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 192(C).
    6. Fang Shen & Zibibula Simayi & Shengtian Yang & Yusuyunjiang Mamitimin & Xiaofen Zhang & Yunyi Zhang, 2023. "A Bibliometric Review of Household Carbon Footprint during 2000–2022," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(7), pages 1-25, April.
    7. An, Na & Huang, Chenyu & Shen, Yanting & Wang, Jinyu & Yu, Zhongqi & Fu, Jiayan & Liu, Xiao & Yao, Jiawei, 2024. "Efficient data-driven prediction of household carbon footprint in China with limited features," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 185(C).
    8. Jiang, Yida & Long, Yin & Liu, Qiaoling & Dowaki, Kiyoshi & Ihara, Tomohiko, 2020. "Carbon emission quantification and decarbonization policy exploration for the household sector - Evidence from 51 Japanese cities," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 140(C).
    9. Yosuke Shigetomi & Asuka Ishigami & Yin Long & Andrew Chapman, 2024. "Curbing household food waste and associated climate change impacts in an ageing society," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 15(1), pages 1-11, December.
    10. Andreas Froemelt & René Buffat & Stefanie Hellweg, 2020. "Machine learning based modeling of households: A regionalized bottom‐up approach to investigate consumption‐induced environmental impacts," Journal of Industrial Ecology, Yale University, vol. 24(3), pages 639-652, June.
    11. Dong, Kangyin & Ni, Guohua & Taghizadeh-Hesary, Farhad & Zhao, Congyu, 2023. "Does smart transportation matter in inhibiting carbon inequality?," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 126(C).
    12. Lévay, Petra Zsuzsa & Vanhille, Josefine & Goedemé, Tim & Verbist, Gerlinde, 2021. "The association between the carbon footprint and the socio-economic characteristics of Belgian households," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 186(C).
    13. Lena Kilian & Anne Owen & Andy Newing & Diana Ivanova, 2022. "Exploring Transport Consumption-Based Emissions: Spatial Patterns, Social Factors, Well-Being, and Policy Implications," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(19), pages 1-26, September.
    14. Wang, Yueying & Liu, Qinming, 2024. "Examining factors driving household carbon emissions from elderly families—Evidence from Japan," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 65(C).
    15. Mach, Radomír & Weinzettel, Jan & Ščasný, Milan, 2018. "Environmental Impact of Consumption by Czech Households: Hybrid Input–Output Analysis Linked to Household Consumption Data," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 149(C), pages 62-73.
    16. Shi, Xunpeng & Wang, Keying & Cheong, Tsun Se & Zhang, Hongwu, 2020. "Prioritizing driving factors of household carbon emissions: An application of the LASSO model with survey data," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 92(C).
    17. Zhou, Yang & Wang, Heng & Qiu, Huanguang, 2023. "Population aging reduces carbon emissions: Evidence from China's latest three censuses," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 351(C).
    18. Long, Yin & Yoshida, Yoshikuni & Meng, Jing & Guan, Dabo & Yao, Liming & Zhang, Haoran, 2019. "Unequal age-based household emission and its monthly variation embodied in energy consumption – A cases study of Tokyo, Japan," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 247(C), pages 350-362.
    19. Theine, Hendrik & Humer, Stefan & Moser, Mathias & Schnetzer, Matthias, 2022. "Emissions inequality: Disparities in income, expenditure, and the carbon footprint in Austria," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 197(C).
    20. Rui Huang & Shaohui Zhang & Changxin Liu, 2018. "Comparing Urban and Rural Household CO 2 Emissions—Case from China’s Four Megacities: Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai, and Chongqing," Energies, MDPI, vol. 11(5), pages 1-17, May.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:enepol:v:186:y:2024:i:c:s0301421524000363. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/enpol .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.