International Industrial Ecology Day 2021

Household consumption drives more than half of the total consumption-based carbon emissions (i.e. carbon footprint) in most developed nations. With this regard, numerous studies have analyzed the household carbon footprint and examined the key actions for the reduction such as eating less red meat. Besides, it has been seen studies using microdata of household consumption through a regression analysis to estimate the associations between the carbon footprint and socioeconomic factors (e.g. household income) in recent years. This study focuses on Japanese household consumption, which contributes to almost two-third total carbon footprint for Japan, and investigates the key drivers using the microdata and the subnational multi-regional input-output table (MRIO). Both the microdata and subnational MRIO are the most finest-scale data currently available in Japan. 25 factors associated with individual lifestyles and socioeconomics are considered, and their associations with the carbon footprint are identified. For example, this study demonstrates that owing one less normal-sized car would have the potential for reducing the CO2 emissions of a household by 922 kg/yr, respectively if the other factors are equal. This presentation will demonstrate the Japanese case of the combination of microdata of consumption expenditure with EEIO and discuss the future perspectives regarding the limitation and the related studies.