The Impact Of Residents' Lifestyles On Energy Consumption Based On Time-use Surveys

The impact of energy consumption on economic development and ecological environment has been increasingly emerging since the 20th century,which makes the study of energy issues become a growing concern for researchers.As the terminal of the energy consumption,residents play important roles in energy issues.Therefore,it is significant for us to analyze the impact of residents' lifestyles on energy consumption.This study aims to explore the impact of lifes-tyles on energy consumption with the methods of longitudinal and horizontal analysis.To perform a detailed analysis,three factors of time use,expenditure and energy intensity are considered as indictors of different lifestyles.Longitudinally,the urban residential energy consumption amount increased up to 4.6 times in general from the year of 1985 to 2010,and the effects are various across different factors.The main conclusions are as follows:1.In general,we found that energy intensity and time use,as decreasing factors,caused 0.42 and 0.92 times of energy consumption respectively,while population,expenditure and expenditure structure,as increasing factors,caused 2.50,3.93,and 1.20 times of energy consumption respectively.The reallocation of time can be considered as the second possible way only to reducing energy intensity to save energy.2.In concrete terms,people's living standard has been improved a lot,thus the change with consumption structures of the two activities of eating and personal hygiene had saved energy consumption by 206.1 kgce in total,and the way people use their leisure time tended to be more various.They started to spend much of their leisure time on more various activities,such as internet,social activities,traveling and visiting etc.instead of a limited activity of watching TV or listening radio.Thus,the energy demand for leisure activities have increased.3.The results of chain replacement decomposition on detail activities show that energy intensity reduced the energy consumption of 8 kinds of activities,while time use and expenditure just reduced energy consumption of 5 and 3 kinds of activities respectively.Therefore,we should take differential measures to guide people's lifestyle.Horizontally,the lifestyle and energy consumption varied much across different social groups.The conclusions are as follows:1.A multiple regression analysis was performed on residents' energy consumption,and the result indicated that an extra revenue of 1 yuan would increase 67.98 kgce;The energy consumption decreased from east to west in China,and the east consume 29.87 kgce more than the west on average;The energy consumption would experience a slight decrease after a substantial increase with the improvement of education;While the energy consumption was negatively correlated with family size,and it showed that the per capita energy consumption of single families is 137.32 kgce more than that of families with 4-5 members.2.The effect of each factor on energy consumption could be reflected through lifestyles such as time use and expenditure etc.For example,people with high income had more leisure time and expenditures;people in east China spent more on living,water and electricity because of more indoor activities;people with higher education had larger total expenditures and they spent more on amusement;people from bigger family tended to spent less time and money on energy intensive activities because of resource sharing.That is,there existed an evident group-variance in residents' lifestyles and energy consumption.According to the results above,the suggestions are as follows:1.The reallocation of people's time can be related to the policies of energy intensity.2.It is possible for government to make differential policies to guide the consumption structure of high income groups and promote the upgrade of fuel of low income groups.3.Introduce environmental protection concept by different ways towards people with different education.4.Encourage the sharing of living space,and set differential consumption policies towards families with different sizes.The innovations of this study are as follows:first,time use was considered as one of the important factors that affect the energy consumption;second,in order to carry out a multi-level and comprehensive analysis of residents' energy consumption,this study first analyzed the vicissitudes of people's lifestyle and their influences on energy consumption longitudinally,then analyzed the differences of lifestyle and energy consumption across people with different revenue,district,education,and family size.