Preceding research has made hardly any attempt to measure the ecological impacts of pro-environmental behaviour in an objective way. Those impacts were rather supposed or calculated. The research described herein scrutinized the ecological impact reductions achieved through pro-environmental behaviour and raised the question how much of a reduction in carbon footprint can be achieved through voluntary action without actually affecting the socioeconomic determinants of life. A survey was carried out in order to measure the difference between the ecological footprint of "green" and "brown" consumers. No significant difference was found between the ecological footprints of the two groups-suggesting that individual proenvironmental attitudes and behaviour do not always reduce the environmental impacts of consumption. This finding resulted in the formulation of a new proposition called the BIG (behaviour-impact gap) problem, which is an interesting addition to research in the field of environmental awareness gaps.
The aim of this article is to draw attention to calculations on the environmental effects of agriculture and to the definition of marginal agricultural yield. When calculating the environmental impacts of agricultural activities, the real environmental load generated by agriculture is not revealed properly through Ecological Footprint indicators,as the type of agricultural farming (thus the nature of the pollution it creates) is not incorporated in the calculation. It is commonly known that extensive farming uses relatively small amounts of labor and capital. It produces a lower yield per unit of land and thus requires more land than intensive farming practices to produce similar yields, so it has a larger crop and grazing Footprint. However, intensive farms, to achieve higher yields, apply fertilizers, insecticides, herbicides, etc., and cultivation and harvesting are often mechanized. In this study, the focus is on highlighting the differences in the environmental impacts of extensive and intensive farming practices through a statistical analysis of the factors determining agricultural yield. A marginal function is constructed for the relation between chemical fertilizer use and yield per unit fertilizer input. Furthermore, a proposal is presented for how calculation of the yield factor could possibly be improved. The yield factor used in the calculation of biocapacity is not the marginal yield for a given area, but is calculated from the real and actual yields, and this way biocapacity and the ecological footprint for cropland are equivalent. Calculations for cropland biocapacity do not show the area needed for sustainable production, but rather the actual land area used for agricultural production. The proposal the authors present is a modification of the yield factor and also the changed biocapacity is calculated. The results of statistical analyses reveal the need for a clarification of the methodology for calculating marginal yield, which could clearly contribute to assessing the real environmental impacts of agriculture.
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