There are many opportunities for consumers to design their lives more sustainably. While a rapidly
growing body of literature has investigated how consumers can reduce carbon footprints in key con-
sumption areas, such as food, housing and mobility, an overall framework that allows structuring those
options across all consumption areas is still missing. Hence, this paper presents a novel and systematic
framework to identify improvement options that promote climate change mitigation and structure them
based on their primary mode of impact on GHG emissions. The framework targets consumer practices
and focuses on ambitious, but technically and socioeconomically feasible strategies for consumers to
lower their carbon footprint. Four major categories for reducing consumption-based emissions form the
basic framework, which are then subdivided into behavioural strategies and sub-strategies. The practical
application of the framework is illustrated by using food consumption as an example. Systematically
identifying improvement options can advance a holistic understanding of the range of behavioural
strategies targeting consumer choices that operate at different stages in the supply chain. It thus provides
a starting point for addressing critical questions related to the role of consumers in supporting climate
change mitigation. (authors' abstract)
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:VIENNA/oai:epub.wu-wien.ac.at:5233 |
| Date | January 2016 |
| Creators | Schanes, Karin, Giljum, Stefan, Hertwich, Edgar |
| Publisher | Elsevier |
| Source Sets | Wirtschaftsuniversität Wien |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Article, PeerReviewed, info:eu-repo/semantics/article |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | Creative Commons: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
| Relation | http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2016.08.154, https://www.elsevier.com/, http://epub.wu.ac.at/5233/, info:eu-repo/grantAgreement/EC/FP7/290647/EU/ENVIRONMENT |
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