Supporting national-level policies for sustainable consumption in Portugal: A socio-economic Ecological Footprint analysis

João-Pedro Ferreira, João Lourenço Marques, Sara Moreno Pires, Katsunori Iha and Alessandro Galli

Ecological Economics, 2023, vol. 205, issue C

Abstract: National level Ecological Footprint studies have highlighted disparities among countries. This assessment has proved essential to accurately characterize ecological impacts to specific countries but often ignore the heterogeneity within national spaces. Population groups within a country engage in different behaviors and consumption patterns that have a distinct impact on the environment. Understanding the contribution of each group and decomposing their consumption of distinct products is critical to helping environmental organizations and policy makers design more efficient policies and communication strategies that will change critical patterns of human demand. In the current study, national household consumption is split into different population groups corresponding to four particular socio-economic dimensions: main sources of income, age, number of members in the household, and levels of education of the population. The aim is to identify critical groups to provide better ground to generate targeted policies that can achieve better environmental results. Results highlight how diverse ecological impacts can occur among distinct population groups, with the highest per capita Footprint values found in households with higher education level, smaller size and those living from Capital/Property Transfers. These results constitute a new possibility to analyze the impact of policies that tackle specific behaviors of distinct population groups.

Keywords: Ecological footprint; Socio-Economic dimension; Sustainable consumption; RAS method; Consumption patterns; Household consumption (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921800922003482
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ecolec:v:205:y:2023:i:c:s0921800922003482

DOI: 10.1016/j.ecolecon.2022.107687

Access Statistics for this article

Ecological Economics is currently edited by C. J. Cleveland

More articles in Ecological Economics from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().