Abstract
Food production requires a large amount of water. As a country facing a serious scarcity of per capita water resources and severe water pollution, China must explore the spatial distribution characteristics of its dietary water footprint. China is the world’s largest developing country, and water consumption inevitably has increased with its economic development. It is essential to explore the factors influencing the water footprint and water conservation mechanisms. Based on China Health and Nutrition Survey (CHNS) data, individual-level data of dietary water footprint and residents’ socio-economic characteristics were obtained. The decision tree was applied to classify the dietary water footprint based on socio-economic factors, and multinomial logistic regression was then performed to investigate the influence of each factor. The results showed that all six selected socio-economic factors had a statistically significant impact on the dietary water footprint. Income and education level were positively related to the dietary water footprint; urban residents, males, and residents with a higher body mass index (BMI) consumed more dietary water than rural residents, females, and those with a lower BMI, respectively. Age exhibited an inverted U-shaped influence. Understanding the drivers and disparities of the water footprint of food consumption can support the development of policy for energy conservation, which can ultimately help achieve the goal of reducing water waste.
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Availability of data and materials
The datasets analyzed in this research were available in the Carolina Population Center of the University of North Carolina. All materials were public and could be found on http://www.cpc.unc.edu/projects/china. This research accessed the data on 11 January 2021.
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Funding
This work was funded by the National Socail Science Fund of China (No. 19CZZ037) , the National Science Fundation of Zhejiang Province (No. LY20G030022), and the Interdisciplinary Research Project of Zhejiang University of Technology (No. GB202003005).
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YK and DY supervised this project. DY and ZP analyzed and performed the data. TW and ZP wrote and revised the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
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Pang, Z., Yan, D., Wang, T. et al. Disparities and drivers of the water footprint of food consumption in China. Environ Sci Pollut Res 28, 62461–62473 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-021-15125-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-021-15125-5