Household carbon emission research: An analytical review of measurement, influencing factors and mitigation prospects

By Xiaoling Zhang, Lizi Luo, M. Skitmore. 2015

200 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are simultaneously exhausting the world's supply of fossil fuels and threatening the global climate. In many developing countries, significant improvement in living standards in recent years due to the accelerating development of their economies has resulted in a disproportionate increase in household energy consumption. Therefore, a major reduction in household carbon emissions (HCEs) is essential if global carbon reduction targets are to be met. To do this, major Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) states have already implemented policies to alleviate the negative environmental effects of household behaviors and less carbon-intensive technologies are also proposed to promote energy efficiency and reduce carbon emissions. However, before any further remedial actions can be contemplated, though, it is important to fully understand the actual causes of such large HCEs and help researchers both gain deep insights into the development of the research domain and identify valuable research topics for future study. This paper reviews existing literature focusing on the domain of HCEs. This critical review provides a systematic understanding of current work in the field, describing the factors influencing HCEs under the themes of household income, household size, age, education level, location, gender and rebound effects. The main quantification methodologies of input–output models, life cycle assessment and emission coefficient methods are also presented, and the proposed measures to mitigate HCEs at the policy, technology and consumer levels. Finally, the limitations of work done to date and further research directions are identified for the benefit of future studies.

Subfields: Automotive Engineering, Environmental Engineering, Renewable Energy, Sustainability and the Environment

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/7c659471de942802b3cd3b300fda3e90c3b5939d

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Citations in the corpus

The unequal distribution of household carbon footprints in Europe and its link to sustainability (2020, background): “Income and CFs are strongly positively correlated, as highlighted by prior studies (Baiocchi et al., 2010; Ivanova et al., 2017; Kerkhof et al., 2009; Zhang et al., 2015), with a correlation coefficient of 0.”
Consumers and their behavior: state of the art in behavioral science supporting use phase modeling in LCA and ecodesign (2016, background): “Other studies such as those on influencing factors and mitigation prospects (Zhang et al. 2015) as well as of persuasive technology to encourage sustainable behavior (Midden et al.”
Household time use, carbon footprints, and urban form: a review of the potential contributions of everyday living to the 1.5 °C climate target (2018, background): “Secondly, household size is consistently identified as a key factor in reducing per-capita carbon footprints, when income differences are controlled for [8,38,40,47,49,53].”
Empirical analysis on the factors influencing national and regional carbon intensity in China (2016, background): “There have been a number of studies exploring ther factors that influence CO2 emissions [43,44].”