Options
Does pro-environmental behaviour affect carbon emissions?
Journal
Energy Policy
ISSN
0301-4215
Type
journal article
Date Issued
2013-09-14
Author(s)
Abstract
The primary focus of this research is to explore the effect of pro-environmental behaviour on CO2 emissions in relation to heating, electricity and transport activities in the residential sector. Changing such behaviour has considerable potential for conserving energy and is an important target of environmental policies which are designed to decrease energy consumption. It is hypothesized that people who consciously act in a pro-environmental way do not necessarily have lower CO2 emissions more than those who do not undertake environmental activities. Data about residential energy use is based on a survey carried out in Hungary in 2010 with a sample of 1012 people. Latent cluster analysis (LCA) was conducted based on data about the reported pro-environmental behavior in the survey and four clusters were identified. Relevant sociostructural and structural factors were also investigated.
Results of the data analysis show that no significant difference is found between the impacts of environmentally aware and environmentally unaware consumers, i.e. both ‘Brown' and ‘Supergreen' consumers consume approximately the same amount of energy and produce approximately the same amount of carbon emissions because the motivation-driven activities of ‘Supergreens' are offset by structural factors.
Results of the data analysis show that no significant difference is found between the impacts of environmentally aware and environmentally unaware consumers, i.e. both ‘Brown' and ‘Supergreen' consumers consume approximately the same amount of energy and produce approximately the same amount of carbon emissions because the motivation-driven activities of ‘Supergreens' are offset by structural factors.
Language
English
Keywords
Latent cluster analysis
Pro-environmental behavior
CO2 emission
HSG Classification
contribution to scientific community
Refereed
Yes
Publisher
Elsevier
Publisher place
Amsterdam
Volume
63
Number
1
Start page
972
End page
981
Pages
10
Subject(s)
Division(s)
Eprints ID
230143