Life Cycle Cost Disclosure, Consumer Behavior, and Business Implications

Comprehensive assessments of final consumption have identified housing as a major contributor to total environmental impacts. Within this category, electrical-energy-using products are important. Do consumers opt for more energy-efficient household appliances if they are provided with life cycle cost (LCC)—that is, the sum of purchase price and operating cost estimated over the life span of the appliance? And what consequences does LCC disclosure have for business? Physical energy figures shown on appliance labels may be cognitively demanding for consumers, whereas monetary information promises to simplify the decision problem. Despite the rising interest in monetary cost disclosure, its effectiveness relative to physical cost disclosure has not been rigorously evaluated. This research approached the question of effectiveness with an online field experiment for washing machines. Customers of a commercially operating online shop were randomly assigned to two groups. The control group was provided with regular product price information; the treatment group received additional LCC information. A total of 2,065 clicks were recorded and analyzed with multiple regression that controlled for several product characteristics. The evidence suggests that LCC disclosure decreases the mean specific energy use of chosen washing machines by 0.8% ( p < 0.01) and their mean specific water use by 0.7% ( p < 0.05). As to business implications, LCC disclosure had no effect on the indicator of retail volume, which makes it unattractive for retailers to provide LCC on their own initiative.     

More or Better? A Model for Changes in Household Greenhouse Gas Emissions due to Higher Income

Households exert an important influence on total greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Therefore, their consumption behavior is of interest in evaluations of climate policy options and projections of future emission paths. While most evaluations of household consumption and its emissions are based on expenditure only, we use a household consumption model based on functional units (e.g., kg food, person kilometers, living square meters). The goal of this article is to assess changes in consumption with increasing affluence level of households and to compare the allocation of GHG emissions to monetary versus functional units. We find that (1) the model based on functional units provides good bottom-up estimates for greenhouse emissions of Swiss households; (2) quality (price per functional unit) increases with income for many consumption categories, and therefore using functional instead of monetary units leads to a lower increase of greenhouse gas emissions with income; (3) the relevance of GHG emissions from goods and mobility will increase. We conclude that using household models based on monetary units only overestimates the impact of marginal consumption and neglects the potential of decoupling income and environmental impact by consuming better instead of more. For sustainable consumption, research and policy should aim at preventing goods of higher quality from having higher environmental impact in order to benefit from the increasing quality orientation with rising income.     

Standby Consumption in Households Analyzed With a Practice Theory Approach

This article focuses on the energy consumption of households and the question of how daily routines can be changed in a more sustainable direction. It discusses different theoretical approaches with which to understand consumer behavior and introduces practice theory that emphasizes sociotechnical structures as the basis for analyzing stability of consumer practices and opportunities for change. Through analysis of ten in-depth interviews with families participating in a project aimed at reducing standby consumption, it is shown how technological configurations, everyday life routines, knowledge, and motivation constitute the practice and also structure the possibilities for change. The article concludes by contending that a conception of human behavior that is both less rational and less individualistic is needed to understand stability and change of households' energy consumption behavior.     

How City Dwellers Affect Their Resource Hinterland

This article links databases on household consumption, industrial production, economic turnover, employment, water use, and greenhouse gas emissions into a spatially explicit model. The causal sequence starts with households demanding a certain consumer basket. This demand requires production in a complex supply-chain network of interdependent industry sectors. Even though the household may be confined to a particular geographical location, say a dwelling in a city, the industries producing the indirect inputs for the commodities that the household demands will be dispersed all over Australia and probably beyond. Industrial production represents local points of economic activity, employment, water use, and emissions that have local economic, social, and environmental impacts. The consumer basket of a typical household is followed in Australia's two largest cities—Sydney and Melbourne—along its upstream supply chains and to numerous production sites within Australia. The spatial spread is described by means of a detailed regional interindustry model. Through industry-specific emissions profiles, industrial production is then translated into local impacts. We show that annually a typical household is responsible for producing approximately 80 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions, uses around 3 million liters of water, causes about A$140,000 to circulate in the wider economy, and provides labor worth just under three full-time employment-years. We also introduce maps that visually demonstrate how a very localized household affects the environment across an entire continent. Our model is unprecedented in its spatial and sectoral detail, at least for Australia.     

The Everyday Life Context of Increasing Energy Demands: Time Use Survey Data in a Decomposition Analysis

Industrial ecologists have modeled with precision the material foundations of industrial systems, but given less attention to the demand for products and the drivers of structural changes in these systems. This article suggests that time use data complement data on monetary expenditure and can be used to elucidate the everyday life context in which the changes in the economy take place. It builds upon the claim that goods are not direct sources of utility, but enter specific household activities as inputs. A second argument for the proposed approach is that it can be used to introduce and foster human agency in analyses of production systems. The article uses Finnish time use survey data, consumption expenditure data, and data on the sectoral energy intensities of financial output in the Finnish economy. First, a measure of the energy intensity of activities is derived by relating consumer time use and the required direct and indirect energy requirements. Second, the results include a decomposition of changes in the energy requirements of private consumption in Finland during the 1990s. It is shown that although the same activities on average require increasing energy inputs per unit of time, Finns have simultaneously changed the structure of their everyday life toward less energy-intensive activities.     

Energy Cost of Living and Associated Pollution for Beijing Residents

China's remarkable economic growth in the last 3 decades has brought about big improvements in quality of life while simultaneously contributing to serious environmental problems. The aim of all economic activities is, ultimately, to provide the population with products and services. Analyzing environmental impacts of consumption can be valuable for illuminating underlying drivers for energy use and emissions in society. This study applies an environmentally extended input‐output analysis to estimate household environmental impact (HEI) of urban Beijing households at different levels of development. The analysis covers direct and indirect energy use and emissions of carbon dioxide (CO₂), sulfur dioxide (SO₂), and nitrogen oxide (NO_x). On the basis of observations of how HEI varies across income groups, prospects for near‐future changes in HEI are discussed. Results indicate that in 2007, an urban resident in Beijing used, on average, 52 gigajoules of total primary energy supply. The corresponding annual emissions were 4.2 tonnes CO₂, 27 kilograms SO₂, and 17 kilograms NO_x. Of this, only 18% to 34% was used or emitted by the households directly. While the overall expenditure elasticity of energy use is around 0.9, there is a higher elasticity of energy use associated with transport. The results suggest that significant growth in HEI can be expected in the near future, even with substantial energy efficiency improvements.     

From Energy to Environmental Analysis

Unsustainable private consumption causes energy and environmental problems. This occurs directly (resource depletion and emissions through using cars for transport) or indirectly (purchase of consumer goods and services for which the production uses energy and emits damaging gases). A hybrid energy analysis proved that indoor energy consumption, mobility, and vacations are the main consumer categories from an energy point of view. Although energy is often used as a proxy for environmental load from private consumption, there are other proxies like methane (CH₄), sulfur oxides (SO_x), and land use. This article describes the results of the extension of the hybrid energy analysis with energy and ten environmental stressors (CH₄, nitrous oxide [N₂O], nitrogen, phosphate, SO_x, nitrogen oxides [NO_x], ammonia [NH₃], nonmethane volatile organic compounds [NMVOCs], particulate matter [PM10], and land use), combined in five impact categories (global warming potential [GWP], acidification, eutrophication, summer smog, and land use). Household consumption was analyzed by dividing Dutch household expenditure into 368 consumer items in 11 categories. The results show that food impacts, in particular, are underestimated when only energy is taken into account. Food makes the highest contribution in three out of five impact categories when all ten stressors are taken into account. Within the food domain, meat and dairy consumer items have the highest environmental impact, about 45% of total food impact on average across all five impact categories. Looking in detail (368 consumer items), there are nine food items in the top ten most‐polluting items. Salad oil and cheese are the most polluting food items.     

Are female-headed households energy efficient: A test of Klausner's hypothesis among Anglo,Spanish-speaking,and black texas households

Klausner has hypothesized that female-headed households are less efficient in the use of energy than male-headed households because they are less disciplined and ordered. The present study used multivariate analyses to determine whether female-headed households were less efficient in the use of electrical energy than male-headed households in a representative sample of 4638 Anglo, Spanish-speaking, and black homeowning Texas households. The results indicated that, after controlling for the effects of other variables known to affect the use of electricity, sex of household head had nostatistically significant independent effect on electricity consumption in any ethnic or marital status group. The authors compare their results to those obtained by Klausner and discuss implications for social organizational theory of household energy consumption.     

The Construction of Normal Expectations

The gradual upward changes of standards in normal everyday life have significant environmental implications, and it is therefore important to study how these changes come about. The intention of the article is to analyze the social construction of normal expectations through a case study. The case concerns the present boom in bathroom renovations in Denmark, which offers an excellent opportunity to study the interplay between a wide variety of consumption drivers and social changes pointing toward long-term changes of normal expectations regarding bathroom standards. The study is problem-oriented and transdisciplinary and draws on a wide range of sociological, anthropological, and economic theories. The empirical basis comprises a combination of statistics, a review of magazine and media coverage, visits to exhibitions, and qualitative interviews. A variety of consumption drivers are identified. Among the drivers are the increasing importance of the home as a core identity project and a symbol of the unity of the family, the opportunities for creative work, the convenience of more grooming capacity during the busy family's rush hours, the perceived need for retreat and indulgence in a hectic everyday life, and the increased focus on body care and fitness. The contours of the emerging normal expectations are outlined and discussed in an environmental perspective.     

User−Producer Interaction in Housing Energy Innovations

Von Hippel and colleagues have highlighted the crucial role of users in innovation in different industries and types of products. They describe the innovation process in terms of the distinct domains of knowledge that producers and users possess. Producers have knowledge about technical solutions and users about their needs, the context of use, and their own capabilities as users. Both sets of knowledge are characterized by stickiness: They move relatively freely within their own domain but are difficult to transfer outside of it.
In the case of radical innovations for sustainable consumption, the problem of sticky information is compounded. Both producers and consumers need to reach out of their conventional competencies and search for new solutions. Societal actors, such as government bodies or environmental experts, can show the way to such solutions, but this new knowledge needs to be integrated with the sticky knowledge about everyday practices in production and consumption.
In the present article we attempt to conceptualize the role and interaction of user and producer knowledge with the knowledge of environmental experts in housing energy innovations. We do so by applying the user−producer interaction framework to a case study on the introduction of low-energy housing concepts in Finland. On the basis of this analysis, we draw conclusions on the potential and limitations of today's practices in the field. For example, we suggest that user involvement can help to enhance the acceptance of low-energy solutions but that the methods for involving users need to be adapted to the particular circumstances in each industry.     

综合生命周期分析在可持续消费研究中的应用

1992年联合国提出可持续消费的概念,经过10几年的发展,生命周期分析已经成为可持续消费的主要研究方法。由于传统生命周期分析方法需要大量基础数据支持,因此目前综合生命周期分析方法被广泛应用于可持续消费研究中。以1997年中国投入产出表为基础,建立了包括CO2排放量的投入产出表延长表。并对居民终端消费产生的CO2排放总量及其与产业部门的关系进行了分析。结果表明,1997年城市居民终端消费人均CO2排放量为1576．62kg,是农村居民CO2排放量的24．96倍,城市居民每个单位货币消费量所产生的CO2的排放量也远远高于农村居民,电力生产部门对居民消费环境影响的贡献率最大。对该方法中存在的一些问题进行了讨论,这些问题主要产生在价值量与物理量转换过程及分配过程中。