Thesis (M.A.)--Carleton University, 1992. / Also available in electronic format on the Internet.

Residential electricity consumption is responsible for approximately 30% of global electricity consumption. Further, residential electricity consumption in the United States of America is 25% of the total energy consumption in the United States. Hence the residential energy sector will play a critical role in the future of the electricity industry, especially given the increasing global demand for affordable electricity services, as well as the urgent need to reduce climate change emissions from the electricity sectors. Recent studies estimate that behavioral changes can reduce residential energy consumption by about 7.4%. So, by providing more detailed feedback to consumers about their energy usage at the appliance level can potentially encourage such behavioral changes. However, achieving a better understanding of the nature of household electricity consumption is challenging, due to the heterogeneity of the residential sector, the complexity of the under-lying drivers and the lack of comprehensive data. Relevant data includes household demographics, including occupant numbers, age distributions, and income; household behavior such as how often occupants use certain appliances and the interest and effort that they devote towards energy conservation; building types, such as the type of dwelling (free standing or unit), different appliance ownership and access to alternatives to electricity for some services such as gas for heating and cooking; and the climate zone of the households as well as the daily weather conditions. As explained before, the wide variation seen across all of these drivers’ leads to considerable differences in households’ electricity consumption. But data on these drivers is not always available. There has generally been only limited electricity consumption data available. Energy Conservation has become one of the first sustainability issues to be addressed through combination of national and local government policies. Human behavior is the major link to the environmental issues like global warming. Making domestic energy consumption visible to the end users has become more challenging due to metering methods. The only commonly visible record of consumption comes in the form of quarterly bills or monthly statements, by which time the links between specific activities and the energy consumed are severely dislocated, a situation described elsewhere as similar to a supermarket not displaying any individual product prices but merely providing the shopper with a total non-itemized bill at the checkout. Such issues create a negative effect on awareness towards sustainability. Many studies has proven that giving feedback on human behavior has significantly affected the energy consumption. To most consumers in developed countries, the fuel used within homes has become, to a large extent, an invisible resource. So, there should be some policy to guide consumers and to make them understand the importance of energy saving. Several test statistics procedures were performed to understand the relationship between residents’ behavior and energy consumption: Impact of indoor and outdoor temperature on energy consumption, Impact of residents’ behavior and awareness on energy consumption, and Impact of all variables in the study on energy consumption.

The traditional Hicks-Allen theory was presented and modified by (1) formulating the consumer's budget constraint with a weak inequality, (2) deriving the Slutsky equation in matrix notation and (3) demonstrating that the income and substitution effects could be derived directly from the partial derivatives of the consumer's demand functions. Two examples of human behavior in the commodity markets were presented, which refute the Hicks-Allen theory. Conceptualizing these examples and similar ones into an economic theory of consumer behavior was the objective of the inquiry. The Hicks-Allen concept of the consumer's utility function was modified by including a set of variables to represent the state of the consumer's environment, These variables were then constrained to imposed levels which were assumed beyond detectable influence by the individual consumer. The traditional problems of (1) determining the consumer's optimal budget, (2) determining the rates at which the consumer adjusts his purchases in response to the determinants of his demands, (3) classifying commodities and inter-commodity relationships, were re-examined. The results were: (1) The consumer's demand functions contain a set of variables representing the imposed state of his environment, (2) The consumer's rates of adjusting his optimal purchases contain additional influences in response to changes in the imposed state of his environment, and (3) An economic classification was proposed for the components of the consumer's environment. To demonstrate the proposed modification a numerical example was given depicting a consumer choosing his optimal budget in a two commodity market contained in a one dimensional environment. The proposed modification was subjected to critical scrutiny and its testability was discussed. Two classes of problems, (a) relating the individual's decisions of how much or how he will utilize any portion of his environment, and (b) determining any economic value for the environment, are not rendered intelligible or comprehensible with the proposed modification. Two classes of problems for further inquiry were suggested, (a) metaphysical problems of demarcating an individual's consumption and his use of an item from his environment, and (b) reformulating the theory of production and the theory of equilibrium price determination along the same lines as the proposed modification. The proposed modification of the Hicks-Allen theory and the method used to analyze the effects of this modification represent the contributions made by this inquiry. / Graduation date: 1970

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Thesis advisor: Juliet B. Schor / This thesis empirically examines the long-standing critique that consumption is inherently apolitical and a distraction from civic and political involvement. This image of consumers has been particularly salient in current debates about 'conscious consumption' motivated by ecological and social justice issues. Whether buying organic or fair-trade actually displaces activism has remained unsubstantiated. Based on the results of an online survey administered to a group of individuals who identify as conscious consumers, regression analyses were conducted to isolate the relationship between conscious consumption and formal and informal activism for over 1700 respondents. The results of the analyses reveal that higher levels of consistency in conscious consumption practices are significantly related to greater social and political involvement on ecological and social justice issues, even when controlling for prior levels of involvement. Respondents also reported higher overall participation rates in general when compared to pre-existing data on nationally representative samples. Consumption is not displacing involvement and activism among these conscious consumers, suggesting that conscious consumption may be an integral element of broader action for many. / Thesis (MA) — Boston College, 2009. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Sociology.

Digitized by Kansas Correctional Industries

Since the reform and opening up in 1978, China’s economy began to grow at a high speed for thirty years. In 2007, the GDP of China was 24952.99 billion RMB, which was the fourth one in the world. However, under these achievement, China’s economy was still face with some problems, such as the different consumption between rural and urban areas.

<p>Since the reform and opening up in 1978, China’s economy began to grow at a high speed for thirty years. In 2007, the GDP of China was 24952.99 billion RMB, which was the fourth one in the world. However, under these achievement, China’s economy was still face with some problems, such as the different consumption between rural and urban areas.</p>