The rebound effect through industrial ecology’s eyes: a review of LCA-based studies

Abstract

Purpose Industrial ecology academics have embraced with great interest the rebound effect principle operationalised within energy economics. By pursuing more comprehensive assessments, they applied tools such as life cycle assessment (LCA) to appraise the environmental consequences of the rebound effect. As a result, the mainstream rebound mechanism was broadened and a diversity of (sometimes inconsistent) definitions and approaches unveiled. To depict the state of play, a comprehensive literature review is needed. Methods A literature review has been carried out by targeting scientific documents relevant for the integration of the rebound effect into LCA-based studies. The search was conducted using two approaches: (1) via online catalogues using a defined search criterion and (2) via cross-citation analysis from the documents identified through the first approach. Results and discussion By analysing a total of 42 works yielded during our review, it was possible to bring together the various advantages of the life cycle perspective, as well as to identify the main inconsistencies and uninformed claims present in literature. Concretely, three main advantages have been identified and are discussed: (1) the representation of the rebound effect as a multi-dimensional, life cycle estimate, (2) the improvement of the technology explicitness and (3) the broadening of the consumption and production factors leading to the rebound effect. Also, inconsistencies on the definition and classification of the rebound effect have been found among studies. Conclusions The review contributes a number of valuable insights to understand how the rebound effect has been treated within the industrial ecology and LCA fields. For instance, the conceptual and methodological refinements introduced by these fields represent a step forward from traditional viewpoints, making the study of the rebound effect more comprehensive and meaningful for environmental assessment and policy making. However, the broadened scope of this new approach unveiled some conceptual inconsistencies, which calls for a common framework. This framework would help the LCA community to consistently integrate the rebound effect as well as to create a common language with other disciplines, favouring learning and co-evolution. We believe that our findings can serve as a starting point in order to delineate such a common framework. Keywords Industrial ecology . Life cycle assessment . Literature review . Rebound effect . Secondary effects . Sustainable consumption 1 A general definition and the description of the main types of rebound effects identified in literature can be found in Sect. 2.

Consumers and their behavior: state of the art in behavioral science supporting use phase modeling in LCA and ecodesign

“…BS may help moving from product orientation to function orientation in assessing the way consumer answer to his need. Moreover, including the assessment of rebound effects (Girod et al 2011;Vivanco and van der Voet 2014) may imply the system expansion. Functional unit Goedkoop et al (1998) and Goedkoop (1999) advocated for determining the functional unit based on the observed consumer and producer's behavior, rather than arbitrarily.…”

“…In fact, rebound effect assessment is another area in which LCA studies has been focused. A recent review by Vivanco and van der Voet (2014) highlights how central is behavioral science for proper modeling direct and indirect rebound effect.…”

“…Often improved products are associated to rebound effects, which are discussed in the literature but not always systematically modeled (e.g., Thiesen et al 2008;Druckman et al 2011;Vivanco and van der Voet 2014). Again behavioral science could be of support in modeling rebound effects related to behavior (Nässén and Holmberg 2009;Freire-González 2011).…”

Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment: What Is It and What Are Its Challenges?

“…However, we feel that deepening discussions are very important as part of maturing LCSA approaches. We illustrate this by the example of modelling rebound effects in a life cycle perspective, which has been addressed by several authors (Hertwich 2005 ;Hofstetter et al 2006 ;Thiesen et al 2008 ;Girod et al 2011 ;Druckman et al 2011 ;Font Vivanco and Voet 2014 ). Hertwich ( 2005 ) defi nes the rebound effect as 'a behavioural or other systemic response to a measure taken to reduce environmental impacts that offsets the effect of the measure.…”

The Prism of Elasticity in Rebound Effect Modelling: An Insight from the Freight Transport Sector

“…The present article does not discuss the limitations of other approaches, nor provide a comprehensive survey of those few that do not use elasticity as a metric for the rebound effect (several studies have used Life Cycle Assesment(LCA), a good review is given by Font Vivanco [19] and there is also the work of Freeman et al who estimate RE using system dynamics modelling [20]. Others have used decomposition analysis, which is ultimately still based on elasticity).…”