Evaluating sustainability of household consumption - using DEA to assess environmental performance

Research output: Contribution to journalJournal articlepeer-review

  • Mette Wier
  • Line Block Christoffersen
  • Trine S. Jensen
  • Ole G. Pedersen
  • Hans Keiding
  • Jesper Munksgaard
We assess environmental performance across product types and across household types in order to evaluate environmental pressure from human activities. To so do, we combine family budget statistics, input-output tables, energy and material flow matrices, various types of emissions and environmental effects indices for various effect types (e.g. a global warming potential index, an ozone depletion potential index, etc). Subsequently, using DEA (Data Envelopment Analysis), we use these weighted environmental effects indices to form one environ-mental performance score for each family type and product type. We find that the environmental performance of each family type changes considerably across environmental effect types. The analysis of the overall environmental performance scores shows that families living in urban flats, especially the young and elderly families, have the most environmentally friendly consum-ption pattern. Middle income families living in houses have the least environmentally friendly consumer basket, and these families constitute a high share of all families in Denmark.
Original languageEnglish
JournalEconomic Systems Research
Volume17
Issue number4
Pages (from-to)425-447
Number of pages23
ISSN0953-5314
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2005

    Research areas

  • Former LIFE faculty - Environmental performane, Product ranking, Sustainable household consumption, DEA analysis, Integrated modelling

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