An Approach to Assess Indirect Environmental Effects of Digitalization Based on a Time-Use Perspective

Jan C. T. Bieser () and Lorenz M. Hilty ()
Additional contact information
Jan C. T. Bieser: University of Zurich
Lorenz M. Hilty: University of Zurich

A chapter in Advances and New Trends in Environmental Informatics, 2018, pp 67-78 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract The digital transformation has direct and indirect effects on the environment. Direct effects are caused by the production, use and disposal of information and communication technology (ICT) hardware. Indirect effects include the changes to patterns of production and consumption enabled by ICT in other domains. Studies of indirect environmental effects of ICT often focus on individual applications domains and their use cases, which implies that these studies cannot capture systemic effects of ICT adoption. We argue that interaction among ICT use cases is crucial to explain systemic environmental effects of ICT. In order to capture these interactions, we suggest focusing on ICT impacts on individual lifestyles, in particular time use, because (i) time is a limited resource for everyone, a fact which makes time budget constraints a central link among different activities and (ii) many ICT use cases relax time and space constraints of individuals, thus changing time allocation. With this approach, we take into account that individual lifestyles are a major determinant of the overall environmental impact and that ICT diffusion changes individual time-use patterns and therefore lifestyles. Based on these considerations, we propose a conceptual framework that describes the causal mechanisms between ICT use, time-use patterns and environmental impacts.

Keywords: Information and communication technology; ICT; Digitalization; Indirect environmental impacts; Environmental impact assessment; Time-use approach; Lifestyles (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

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:spr:prochp:978-3-319-99654-7_5

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/9783319996547

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-99654-7_5

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Progress in IS from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().