The aim of this study is to develop an operational method to determine the direct and indirect environmental impacts of Austrian household’s consumption pattern and to apply this method together with social research methods to evaluate the household’s consumption pattern of two different settlements. The operational method is set up on the Household Environmental Impact (HEI) assessment based on household interviews, and without conducting a full consumer expenditure survey.
The empirical research is designed as a case-control study of the car-free settlement in Vienna and aims to evaluate how the consumption patterns of the inhabitants differ from a ‚control group‘, what impact that has on the environment taking the income (or ‚rebound‘) effect into account, and how the attitudes and social determinants of behaviour differ between the two groups. The environmental profile of the households is calculated by using consumer expenditure surveys, information from the national accounting tables (with environmental accounts), from product life cycle assessment, and data from the conducted survey. Survey research on the motivations, preferences, and social factors is used to evaluate the driving forces and social dynamics that determine the environmental profiles of the selected households.
