Declining Sustainability: The Case of Shopping Trip Energy Consumption

Kitamura, R., Sakamoto, K. & Waygood, O. (2008). Declining Sustainability: The Case of Shopping Trip Energy Consumption. International Journal of Sustainable Transportation, 2(3), 158-176.

As typical shopping behavior changed from foot-based visits to neighborhood shopping streets or corner grocery stores to auto-based visits to large-scale retail stores, shopping trip energy consumption increased substantially in the Osaka metropolitan area between 1970 and 2000. Underlying this phenomenon are, among others, progress of motorization, declining household size, and diminishing households with a homemaker. The effects of these and other factors are examined through an analysis of variance of large-scale household travel survey data from 1970 and 2000. It is shown that changes in demographics and socioeconomics alone would not have produced the observed magnitude of increase in shopping trip energy consumption. The more substantial contributor has been structural change, which has presumably been caused by the urban system adjusting its elements—land use, transportation networks, facility location, retail systems, and so forth—to adapt to increased ownership and use of the automobile.

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