Study on the interactive relationship between urban residents’ expenditure and energy consumption of production sectors

Abstract

Urban residential expenditure describes the end demand of urban system, we construct a framework that incorporates the urban residential expenditure and sectoral energy consumption to reveal the interactive mechanism, and clarify how these indicators are influencing each other. A fuzzy cognition map that consists of 8 consumer expenditures, 19 production sectors and 1 household sector's direct energy consumption is built. Genetic algorithm is introduced to solve the weight of the fuzzy cognition map to explore the interactive relationship between urban residents' expenditure and energy consumption of production sectors. Taking the data of Beijing from 2006 to 2017 as an example, results suggest that: residents' food expenditure has a negative impact on energy consumption in various industries, especially in the agricultural sector; residential expenditure has the greatest positive impact on energy consumption in manufacturing and real estate industries; the financial sector and public manage and social organization sector, and the residents' food expenditure and traffic and telecommunications expenditure have the greatest impact on Beijing's energy consumption. It is revealed that policies regarding to controlling or changing residents' spending behavior, including food, traffic and telecommunication, will effectively contribute to reducing Beijing's sectoral energy consumption. This paper provides quantitative evidence for urban energy conservation focused policies.