The Impact of Changes in Households’ Consumption Structure on Air Pollutant Emissions: Structural Decomposition Analysis

Households, directly and indirectly, are responsible for emission of various air pollutants. Indirect emission by households is due to the consumption of goods and services which use fossil fuels in their production processes. The purpose of this study is to investigate the changes in the structure of households’ consumption on the indirect emissions of four types of air pollutants including carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides and methane using structural decomposition analysis in the input-output model during 2001-2011. In this study, the matrix of consumption of goods and services by households was divided into the following two components: the total volume of consumption and the structure of consumption. We have then investigated the effect of changes in the structure of consumption on pollutant emissions. The results show that the change in the structure of consumption has increased the all air pollutant emissions. The increased amounts of these pollutants as a result of changes in consumption structure is 78.08 million ton CO2, 319.28 thousand tons SO2, 296.1 thousand tons NOx and 481.2 thousand tons Methane.