Detailing household time use in an input-output database for climate footprint estimation

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change emphasized the significance of household time use in determining households' climate footprint in their recent Sixth Assessment Report. To estimate the climate footprint associated with the entire life cycle of market activities, environmentally extended input-output databases provide a comprehensive record of product flows between the activities. However, representing household activities in such databases is equally important from a sustainability perspective, reflecting that household behaviour drives the climate footprint. Although a few studies have estimated the climate footprint associated with time spent in various activities, there is, to our knowledge, currently no consistent effort to integrate household time and money expenditures into environmentally extended input-output databases. While our current work has concentrated on the UK, our project will develop a multi-country database that distinguishes socio-economic groups and depicts the input of time as well as market and household-produced products to household activities, alongside the market economy. By distinguishing household production from consumption activities, we aim to achieve a comprehensive representation of the production that occurs in society. By providing climate footprint estimates for household activities, our database considers both the monetary and temporal constraints faced by households. From a climate change perspective, results can inform policymakers about whether targeting the structure of household activity patterns or the consumption during an activity is most important and provide an informed basis for whether a household-produced product is better than a similar market product. Although our current project focuses on the climate footprint, the database can be expanded to include the impact on other Sustainable Development Goals such as good health and well-being or decent work.