The Environmental Impact of Sharing: Household and Urban Economies in CO2 Emissions

Anders Fremstad (), Anthony Underwood and Sammy Zahran

No 2016-01, Working Paper Series from Dickinson College, Department of Economics

Abstract: Studies find that per capita carbon dioxide emissions (CO2) decrease with household size and urban density, so the demographic trends of declining household size and dense urbanization produce countervailing effects with respect to emissions. We posit that both trends operate on a common scaling mechanism realized through the sharing of carbon- intensive expenditures. With detailed data from the United States Consumer Expenditure Survey, we construct a dataset of CO2 emissions at the household level and leverage a unique measure of residential density to estimate household and urban economies. We find that dense urban areas have per capita emissions 23 percent lower than rural areas, and that adding an additional member to a household reduces per capita emissions by about 6 percent. We also show that household economies are about twice as large in rural as compared to dense urban areas. These results suggest that the carbon benefits of dense urbanization have the potential to offset the effects of declining household size.

Keywords: Emissions; Urban Density; Sharing; Household Size; Energy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D1 Q4 R2 R3 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 22 pages
Date: 2016-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ene, nep-env, nep-res and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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Related works:
Journal Article: The Environmental Impact of Sharing: Household and Urban Economies in CO2 Emissions (2018)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:dic:wpaper:2016-01

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