Food, Energy, and Water Nexus at Household Level: Do Sustainable Household Consumption Practices Promote Cleaner Environment?

Pomi Shahbaz; Shamsheer Ul Haq; Azhar Abbas; Abdus Samie; Ismet Boz; Salim Bagadeem; Ziyue Yu; Zhihui Li

doi:10.3390/ijerph191912945

Food, Energy, and Water Nexus at Household Level: Do Sustainable Household Consumption Practices Promote Cleaner Environment?

Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2022 Oct 10;19(19):12945. doi: 10.3390/ijerph191912945.

Authors

Pomi Shahbaz¹, Shamsheer Ul Haq², Azhar Abbas³, Abdus Samie³, Ismet Boz¹, Salim Bagadeem⁴, Ziyue Yu^{5

6}, Zhihui Li⁵

Affiliations

¹ Department of Agricultural Economics, Ondokuz Mayıs University, Samsun 55139, Turkey.
² Department of Economics, Division of Management and Administrative Science, University of Education, Lahore 54770, Pakistan.
³ Institute of Agricultural and Resource Economics, University of Agriculture, Faisalabad 38040, Pakistan.
⁴ Faculty of Business Administration, Arab Open University, Riyadh 11681, Saudi Arabia.
⁵ Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China.
⁶ Department of Architecture and Built Environment, The University of Nottingham Ningbo China, Ningbo 315100, China.

Abstract

Governments around the globe are trying to find sustainable solutions for lessening pressure on natural resources and reducing carbon emissions. Daily household consumption of food, energy, and water has an impact on stocks of natural resources, environmental quality, and climate change. Households have significant potential for increasing conservation actions for efficient use of natural resources and greenhouse gas emissions. Households could contribute to a clean and healthy environment by adopting sustainable household practices through lower per capita consumption and carbon emissions. This study explored the role of different sustainable household consumption practices in promoting a clean environment as well as the factors affecting the adoption of these practices in Pakistan. Factor analysis and an ordered probit model were used to analyze the data from 1424 participants chosen through a multistage random sampling technique. The factor analysis identified 35 sustainable household practices for sustainable consumption. These 35 practices were grouped into the underlying factors of "Food" (14 items), "Energy" (12 items), and "Water" (9 items). The results from the econometric model showed a significant relationship between gender, education, residential area, family size, and income and the adoption of sustainable household consumption practices. Statistically, higher levels of reported sustainable consumption practices were apparent among females, households living in urban areas, more educated people, individuals of large family sizes, and more affluent households. Therefore, public policies for taking care of the environment need to put households at the center while at the same time promoting mass uptake of sustainable consumption practices related to food, energy, and water. In addition, the sector-specific policies also need to be augmented through focus on household-level consumption and production dynamics for achieving the UN's SDGs.

Keywords: GHG emission; consumer behavior; ecosystem services; energy sustainability; environmental conservation.

MeSH terms

Carbon
Environment
Family Characteristics
Female
Food
Greenhouse Gases*
Humans

Substances

Greenhouse Gases
Carbon

Grants and funding

This research received no external funding.