Sustainability And Influencing Factors Of Urban Household Consumption ——A Case Study Of Guangzhou

In recent years,China has been experiencing rapid urbanization,which brought about the rise of residents' income and the change in the consumption patterns.The change of household consumption was mainly manifested in the increase of total consumption expenditure and the change of consumption structure.At present,the biggest problem in China's consumption structure is the non-sustainability of consumption.The massive resources consumption and wastes emission caused by household consumption pose a major challenge to the urban sustainable development.The problem should not be seen as a single economic or social problem,but rather as a socio-economic-natural complex ecosystem problem.As a basic unit of social terminal consumption,household is a kind of complex ecosystem.The population is the main component of household social subsystem,and the consumption and income represent the main structure of economic subsystem while the living place determines the structure of family natural subsystem.With the improvement of consumption level,household has gradually become a consumption-oriented system.Based on the complex ecosystem theory,this study constructed a household consumption research framework at the city-community scales,and explored the coupling relationship among the social subsystem,economic subsystem and natural subsystem of the household.Specifically,the sustainability of current household consumption patterns and the environmental impacts were identified at the urban(macro)scale and the characteristics and influencing factors of household consumption were analyzed at the community(micro)scale.Finally,suggestions were put forward to improve the unsustainable consumption pattern.Some methods were adopted,including emergy analysis,emergy based ecological footprint-ecological efficiency model,and statistical analysis.Taking Guangzhou as the study area,this research was conducted as follows:Firstly,at the urban(macro)scale,emergy analysis was used to evaluate the changes and sustainability of the consumption patterns of urban household composite ecosystem in Guangzhou in 2000,2005,2010,2015 and 2019.The results showed that the total emergy consumption(U),the non-renewable emergy consumption(N),and the renewable production emergy consumption(R1)increased during 2000-2019,and the growth rate of U accelerated during 2010-2019.In the household social subsystem,the total emergy per capita(Ucap)and the non-renewable resources per capita(Ncap)showed an increasing trend,the renewable resources per capita(Rcap)showed a decline trend,which illustrated the resource supply capability of the natural environment free to the family was declining.The main reason was the rapid growth of urban population.In the household economic subsystem,the percentage of non-renewable emergy in total emergy(NUr)tends to exceed the renewable ratio,indicating that the dependence of household life consumption on external non-renewable resources was gradually increasing.In the household natural subsystem,the environmental load ratio(ELR)and the emergy ratio of waste to renewable resources(WRr)showed a significant increasing trend,which showed that the excessive consumption of non-renewable resources and the massive waste discharge of household have led to more severe environmental pressure in recent years.The sustainable development index(ESI)in 2000,2005,2010,2015 and 2019 were 1.45,0.50,0.23,0.17 and 0.10 respectively,indicating that the current household consumption pattern is unsustainable.This will not be conducive to the healthy and stable development of the region.Secondly,at the urban(macro)scale,emergy ecological footprint-ecological efficiency model was used to analyze the dynamic changes of the environmental impact of urban household composite ecosystem material consumption.The emergy ecological footprint of urban household consumption(EEF)in 2000,2005,2010,2015 and 2019 was calculated according to different land types and different household consumption accounts.The emergy ecological efficiency of household consumption(EEE)was calculated by introducing the concept of household green income(GIMP).The results indicated that the EEF showed an increasing trend,and the growth rate accelerated from 2010 to 2019.However,the emergy ecological carrying capacity(EEC)of Guangzhou showed a declining trend and was closer to EEF in 2019(the EEF was 2.53E+04 m2 per capita and the EEC was 3.70E+04 m2 per capita).Among all the EEF of different land types,water area accounted for the highest proportion,followed by construction land,cultivated land,grassland,fossil energy land,and forest.Although the proportion of fossil energy land EEF and the construction land EEF in the total EEF was not large,but the growth rate was the highest.The main reason was that the large consumption of fossil energy in the consumption process and the increasing demand for housing area of urban households.In the household consumption account,the EEF generated by the consumption of biological resources dominated the total EEF.Although household energy consumption EEF and the water consumption EEF accounted for a relatively low proportion of the total EEF,the rapid growth should be paid more attention.From 2005 to 2019,EEE fluctuated up and down and then tended to be stable.The ecological efficiency in 2019 was lower than that in 2010,which further showed that the increase of ecological footprint caused by household consumption cannot be ignored and the current unsustainable consumption pattern should be changed.Thirdly,in order to analyze the characteristics of household composite ecosystem and the influencing factors of household consumption,a questionnaire survey was conducted at the community(micro)scale.The characteristics of the social subsystem were that most of the purchasers of daiy necessities were women,and most of the purchasers were employees of companies or other professions.The characteristics of the economic subsystem showed that food,housing,and education accounted for a large proportion of household expenditure in daily consumption.In daily travel,private cars were the most commonly used means.Electricity,natural gas,coal,and gasoline were the most commonly used energy for daily life.The characteristics of the natural subsystem showed that the amusement parks,parks,fitness trails were still lacking,transportation facilities were not perfect,but the environmental protection facilities were perfect.In terms of the influencing factors of household consumption,both the social subsystem and the natural subsystem had significant influence on the economic subsystem.Specifically,the gender and the educational level(social subsystem),the residential communities(natural subsystem)had significant impacts on the proportion of residential consumption in total consumption(economic subsystem).In addition,there was a coupling relationship between household social subsystem and househod natural subsystem.Fourthly,since significant difference of the household consumption could be found among the five communities and the environmental problems caused by household energy consumption have become increasingly serious in recent years,further research on the household consumption differences and energy carbon emissions was conducted.The results showed that there were significant differences in the daily consumption structure,housing conditions,daily travel distance,public transportation cost,household durable goods service life,and energy consumption of families in different communities,which further verified that the household natural subsystem had influence on the the household economic subsystem.The average household energy carbon emissions was 410.6 kgCO2/month,much higher than the national average emissions,so use of clean energy to reduce the household energy carbon emission should be encouraged.The respondents' basic family information,main household consumption items,family housing conditions,daily travel modes,family living habits,and residents' environmental awareness all had significant impacts on energy carbon emissions.It showed that in the process of household consumption,all the subsystems of the household complex ecosystem had effect on the environment.It was also found that improving residents' satisfaction with local infrastructure and environment played an important role in reducing carbon emissions.In order to achieve sustainable household consumption and reduce carbon emissions caused by household consumption,the environmental protection consciousness of the residents in the high cost neighborhoods should be improved and the consumption transformation should be promoted.For the relatively backward communities,Based on the composite ecosystem theory,household consumption was studied at city-community scale,and a set of evaluation indicators and methodology system to evaluate the sustainability and the influence factor of household consumption.The results showed that the coupling relationship among the three subsystems of the family complex ecosystem promotes and restricts each other.On the one hand,the growth of population(social subsystem)promoted the change of consumption level(economic subsystem),which led to a large amount of resource consumption and waste discharge,and had a negative impact on the living environment(natural subsystem).On the other hand,the natural subsystem played a feedback role to the economic subsystem and social subsystem.Changing the current unsustainable consumption pattern can be promoted by optimizing the structure of social and economic subsystems in the household complex ecosystem(such as improving the comprehensive quality of residents and the consumption behavior).At the government level,the construction of urban infrastructure and environmental protection should be strengthened to improve residents' satisfaction.The government can also encourage the research and development of green products by reducing taxes.In addition,the implementation of extended producer responsibility system and the improvement of resource utilization should be carried out promote the development of sustainable consumption.Sustainable household consumption pattern is of great significance to the reduction of carbon emissions from household consumption,the healthy and stable development of cities and the realization of carbon neutrality in China.