Previous studies found that households’ energy use and consumption of goods and services contribute greatly to increasing carbon emissions, but only computing national-level total carbon emission is not enough to know the whole picture of consumers’ contribution to carbon emissions. This study estimated household carbon emissions using the 2019 Taiwan’s Survey of Family Income and Expenditure as an example to investigate the heterogeneity effect of household income on direct/indirect carbon emissions through dividing income sources into six categories. The number of households in our sample is 16528. This study adds to the literature in various aspects. First, our data provides more detailed information regarding the composition of income, which includes compensation of employee, entrepreneurial income, property income, imputed rent income, current transfer income, and miscellaneous income Second, we estimate direct and indirect carbon emission separately. Third, using quantile regression to examine the relationship between household income and carbon emissions could shed light on variation in the source of income types across different emission quantiles. Our results show that household incomes have higher effects on higher household carbon emission quantiles, and the effect of income on household indirect carbon emission is greater than that on household direct carbon emission, suggesting the promotion to purchase second-handed items and low carbon footprint products is an important avenue to reduce carbon emissions from households.

Authors:
Ya-Ming Liu, National Cheng Kung University, Taiwan
Yen-Lien Kuo, National Cheng Kung University, Taiwan
Ching-Wen Yang, National Cheng Kung University, Taiwan

About the Presenter(s)
Professor Ya-Ming Liu is currently a Professor of Economics at National Cheng Kung University in Taiwan

See this presentation on the full schedule – Friday Schedule

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