Work less, do less?

Abstract

A reduction in working hours is being considered to tackle issues associated with ecological sustainability, social equity and enhanced life satisfaction-a socalled triple dividend. With respect to an environmental dividend, the authors analyse the time use rebound effects of reducing working time. They explore how an increase in leisure time triggers a rearrangement of time and expenditure budgets, and thus the use of resources in private households. Does it hold true that time-intensive activities replace resource-intensive consumption when people have more discretionary time at their disposal? This study on environmental issues is complemented by introducing the parameters of voluntary social engagement and individual life satisfaction as potential co-benefits of rebound effects. In order to analyse the first dividend, a mixed methods approach is adopted, enabling two models of time use rebound effects to be applied. First, semi-standardised interviews reveal that environmentally ambiguous substitutions of activities occur following a reduction in working hours. Second, estimates for Germany from national surveys on time use and expenditure show composition effects of gains in leisure time and income loss. For the latter, we estimate the marginal propensity to consume and the marginal propensity to time use. The results show that time savings due to a reduction in working time trigger relevant rebound effects in terms of resource use. However, both the qualitative and quantitative findings put the rebound effects following a reduction in working time into perspective. Time use rebound effects lead to increased voluntary social engagement and greater life satisfaction, the second and third dividends.

Carbon Footprints and Consumer Lifestyles: An Analysis of Lifestyle Factors and Gap Analysis by Consumer Segment in Japan

“…One additional person working full-time would usually be associated with a substantial increase in income, the effects of which may outweigh the decreased emissions from limited free time. These results confirm the relevance of time use aspects in terms of the sustainability of lifestyles [49][50][51].…”

Reducing Working Hours as a Means to Foster Low(er)-Carbon Lifestyles? An Exploratory Study on Swiss Employees

“…While this explains why the reported effects on the study participants' consumption patterns appeared to be small, it did seem to lead to a decrease in the amount study participants save and an increase in awareness of what they spend. Based on our results we must assume that there is no guarantee for an income effect as described in other studies on consumption decisions [18,19] on an intra-individual level and that the circumstances under which a decision to reduce ones working hours is taken, have to be looked at more closely. On top of this, the high degree of financial security that the study participants enjoyed poses the question of who can actually afford to voluntarily reduce their working time and whether such a degree of (perceived) financial and job security might even be a prerequisite for voluntary reductions of working hours.…”

“…However, how these relationships manifest themselves on an intra-individual level remains unclear up to now. They may be conceptualized in three ways, as illustrated in Figure 1: First, it has been argued, that working less will result in a loss of income, and thus a decrease in high-carbon consumption and activities; referred to as the so-called income effect [18,19]. Previous research has provided well-established evidence that higher incomes go along with higher levels of consumption and thus higher individual carbon footprints [6,11], but very few studies have verified an intra-individual connection between the two, i.e., a nexus between changes in income and changes in consumption as well as carbon footprints that occur within the same respective individual over time.…”

“…In order to evaluate whether a reduction in working time can reliably be described as a strategy that supports the emergence of low(er)-carbon lifestyles, researchers have examined the net burden of energy use and carbon footprints, when subtracting the increase in ecological burden due to the time effect from the increase in ecological benefits due to the income effect. These studies point in the direction of the income effect being stronger than the adverse effects of time affluence [18,19]. However, as mentioned, this empirical evidence is based on inter-individual comparisons and little is known on whether and if so, why individuals relocate time to resource-friendly activities after experiencing more time affluence due to a reduction of working hours.…”

Transition and Social Practices

“…Actually reaching a dematerialization by a factor 10 ( Schmidt-Bleek, 1993) is necessary to reach a sustainable resource consumption of eight tons per capita per year (Lettenmeier, Liedtke & Rohn, 2014). Doubtless, technological innovations are an important pillar for this, however, rebound effects of efficiency gains (Sorell, 2007;Buhl & Acosta, 2016) or wrong application of potentially sustainable innovations (Liedtke, Baedeker, von Geibler & Hasselkuß, 2012) show the limits of the presently anticipated technology oriented strategy to comply with a sustainable development and accomplish a factor 10 dematerialisation (Liedtke, Buhl & Ameli, 2013a). Taking the perspective of social practice theories in a transition framework helps to foster this integrated approach.…”