The impact of human behavior on ecological threshold: Positive or negative?—Grey relational analysis of ecological footprint, energy consumption and environmental protection

Human behavior has the positive and negative impact on ecosystem. To study the interaction between ecosystem and behavior system, per-capita energy ecological footprint (EEF) is selected as the ecosystem threshold. Elasticity coefficient of environmental investment (ECEI) and elasticity coefficient of energy consumption (ECEC) represent the positive and negative human impact on ecosystem, respectively. It takes Shanghai, China as the empirical area to implement grey relational analysis of per-capita EEF (consist of coal, coke, fuel oil, and electricity), ECEC and ECEI from 1978 to 2010. The grey correlation coefficients show that negative behavior of energy consumption has the closer influence on the ecosystem than positive behavior of environmental protection. Electricity is the most significant factor of the energy consumption and the highest sensitive indicator to the environmental capital input–output. From the perspective of government policy, “energy saving” is more efficient than “emission reduction”. Reducing the negative activities is imminent in the current process of development.

► We demonstrate the interaction between ecosystem and behavior system by grey analysis.
► We calculate the grey correlation coefficients between ECEI, ECEC and EEF in Shanghai.
► Electricity is the key indicator to energy consumption and environmental protection.
► Negative behavior has more significant impact on ecosystem than positive behavior.
► Reducing the negative activities is imminent in the current process of development