The overall aim of this action was to make a novel contribution to the understanding of the ways in which changes in household resource sharing affect carbon emissions and environmental degradation and how they are influenced by socio-cultural trends. The aim was further to identify suitable sharing interventions at different political scales, from the micro to the macro. The project has fully achieved its research aims, objectives and milestones for the period, which are reviewed in more detail below.
Objective 1: Estimate the extent to which the reduction of consumption-based carbon and environmental footprints has been “slowed down” over time in the EU countries by shrinking household sizes and related changes in the household composition, controlling for additional footprint determinants.
We published a number of journal publications making direct contributions towards achieving this objective (Ivanova and Büchs (2020), Ivanova and Büchs (2022), Jack and Ivanova (2021), Ivanova and Middlemiss (2021), Baltruszewicz et al (2021)). Through these publications, we confirmed that shrinking household sizes “slow down” emission reduction and also negatively affect other environmental outcomes in the EU and worldwide. We also demonstrated household size shrinking trends globally and quantified the associated carbon increases or lost carbon savings (Ivanova and Büchs (2022)); particularly, we found that shrinking households in 43 countries including the EU caused emissions of 11 Giga tonnes CO2-equivalents (tCO2eq) between 1995 and 2015. We controlled for additional variables including income and source of income, socio-demographics (e.g. gender, age, disability, marital status), technical and infrastructural variables (e.g. fossil fuel energy consumption, carbon intensity of the energy mix, energy intensity of income, population density) and country fixed effects. These research contributions are critical at a time of climate emergency; they outline household sharing as an area with key mitigation potential globally, but also with substantial carbon implications in the present and recent past.
Objective 2: Identify through qualitative analysis suitable policy approaches that promote the sharing of resources within and outside of households, whilst considering gender equality, individualisation, and other important socio-cultural trends.
We highlighted solutions and suitable policy approaches through quantitative (Ivanova and Büchs (2022)), qualitative (Ivanova and Büchs (2023)), and mixed-methods (Jack and Ivanova (2021)) and open-access research publications. We concluded that while sharing is often depicted as naturally socially and environmentally beneficial, there are many economic, social, and infrastructural barriers that limit these potentials. We highlighted enablers and policy solutions that support sharing that promotes the salience of environmental limits, access to essential goods and services, and non-exploitative relationships (Ivanova and Büchs (2023)), i.e. what we termed radical or transformative sharing. We discussed the role of power, politics, capitalism and citizenship alongside the more widely recognised issues around exploitation, discrimination, and greenwashing. We further conducted qualitative interviews towards highlighting policy levers and recommendations in various domains: institutional and economic, infrastructural, and socio-cultural.
In our analysis, we were conscious to highlight some of the social benefits related to shrinking household sizes (e.g. residential autonomy or female emancipations). We discuss sharing practices and policy as an area that has great environmental potential, but where contemporary household complexities and cultural developments require a holistic approach. Any sharing interventions should preserve and encourage (rather than undermine) achievements of good health and well-being (SDG3), quality education (SDG4), gender equality (SDG5), decent work (SDG8) and reduced inequalities (SDG10), all of which may have implications for household dynamics.
