Research On The Measurement And Development Of Green Consumption

The basic role of consumption in China is increasing in the new era.Due to the rapid growth of consumption,the natural resources consumption and the ecological environment destruction are both big problems.Because the rise of consumption and environmental problems,people try to save natural resources and protect the ecological environment while consuming.Green consumption not only pays attention on environmental protection,but also benefits human for their health.However,there are still many deficiencies in the development of green consumption in China.The existing research on how to scientifically measure the development level of green consumption and how to effectively promote green consumption is relatively lacking.This paper focuses on the above issues to provide theoretical and empirical evidences for promoting green consumption.Firstly,the paper summarizes the practice and theoretical development process of green consumption.By summarizing the evolution of green consumption policies in China and abroad,the parper analyzes the opportunities and challenges of green consumption.The paper summarizes the basic content of green consumption research.Secondly,this paper measures and depicts green consumption.This paper defines green consumption and describes its main characteristics.Furthermore,it describes the scientific connotation of green consumption and constructs the index system of green consumption index,measures the green consumption index and three sub-system indexes of China from 2000 to 2018,and analyzes their evolution characteristics and mutual relations.The development of China’s green consumption is generally good,with the green consumption index rising from 66.2 in2000 to 84 in 2018.The development of the three subsystems of green consumption shows obvious differences.The paper finds that the average Gini coefficient of green consumption from 2000 to 2017 is 0.418%,and the Gini coefficient of green consumption has decreased from 0.434%in 2000 to 0.396% in 2017.Besides,the green consumption Gini coefficient in the western and eastern regions is the highest,followed by the central region,that of northeast region is the lowest.This paper explores spatial agglomeration in the development of green consumption in China.After 2006,China’s green consumption development no longer presents obvious spatial correlation.With the continuous growth of China’s economy and the gradual deepening of the concept of ecological and environmental protection,the lifestyle of green consumption has gradually changed from relatively concentrated in a few areas to being widely accepted by the national residents.Thirdly,this paper carries out the structural decomposition of green consumption index.Through Kaya identity and LMDI factor decomposition model,the driving factors of green consumption index are decomposed into economic effects,technological effects and ecological effects.Economic growth is the primary driving force for the development of China’s green consumption,the lack of technology and ecological environment are the important factors restricting the development of China’s green consumption.Further,it analyzes the driving effects of green consumption from the regional and provincial level.Fourthly,with the help of the expanded form of STIRPAT model,the main factors affecting the promotion of green consumption are quantitatively analyzed,and the BMA method and 2SBMA method are used to effectively solve the uncertainty and endogenous problems of the model.The results show that the total retail sales of social consumer goods,the lagging items of R&D expenditure,the total area of afforestation and other economic,technological and ecological factors are very effective for the promotion of green consumption.Due to the cost effect,the full-time equivalent of R&D personnel inhibits the promotion of green consumption.The main contributions of this paper are as follows:First,a new index system of green consumption evaluation is constructed.The evaluation index system of green consumption is enriched,and the evaluation system is closer to the "green" elements than the existing sustainable consumption index,ecological consumption index,urban and rural residents sustainable consumption index and green economic development index,and the green level of production links and ecological environment are considered.Based on the theory of environmental economics,this paper constructs green consumption index from three dimensions of production,life and ecology,and combines the basic paradigm of consumer economics to refine it to six secondary indicators,such as consumption level,consumption structure and consumption environment.In addition,the index system can be divided into three subsystems: production,life and ecology,which is comparable among different subsystems,reflecting that green consumption in China has developed well in production and ecological links,and has some shortcomings in life.Second,it depicts the "two characteristics and one effect of green consumption".This paper describes the differences,agglomeration and decomposition effects of green consumption development from the macro perspective,which is more comprehensive than the micro perspective,and is more conducive to the overall understanding and grasp the economic characteristics of green consumption.The decomposition effect shows that different regions with different economic development level and natural resources endowment may achieve better green consumption development results,but also be restricted by different factors.Third,the main factors that affect the development of green consumption are tested.This paper is not limited to the analysis of single influencing factors of green consumption,but considers the influence of different factors on green consumption development from three aspects of economy,technology and ecology.The model uncertainty and endogeneity are effectively dealt with by Bayesian model average method and two-stage Bayesian model average method,which can ensure the stability of the results.In addition,compared with other research applications of the method,the significance standard of the selected model is improved.The research not only found the important promotion effect of economic factors on the development of green consumption in China,but also verified that there are "cost effect","extrusion effect" and "rebound effect" in the development of green consumption,which provides empirical evidence for better promotion of green consumption development.