Time use and carbon dioxide emissions accounting: An empirical analysis from China

Time is an absolutely scarce resource for humans. Considering the fact that people consume goods and services to fulfill their daily activities in 24 hours a day, a new perspective based on time use might be more intuitive for understanding why and how people allocate their time and consumption to different activities, and what the energy demand and emissions will be in the future when time-use patterns shift. Accordingly, the policy implications for reducing carbon dioxide emissions could be extended to more fundamental dimensions related to people's activity structures, activity duration, and consumption patterns of activities. This study attempts to transform the energy and emissions problems into a finite time-use problem, by investigating the change of energy consumption and emissions building on a time-use-based approach. To that end, we take China as the empirical context, and investigate potential time-use patterns for Chinese residents. Scenario analyses assuming that Chinese residents may shift to time-use patterns in developed countries are further conducted to give a general picture of future carbon dioxide emissions and meanwhile to explore a low-carbon time-use pattern for Chinese residents. We find that, a potential Chinese residents’ low-emissions route may involve shifting to the activity patterns of American residents and the hybrid consumption patterns of activities composed of patterns found in Finland, Japan and UK. And six main time-use activities, including Travel, Personal care, Repairs, Gardening and Pet care, Sleep and Rest, Eating and Drinking, and Recreation and Leisure, will make a greater contribution to increasing daily emissions from residents if they shift their time-use patterns in the future.