✦✦UPCOMING✦✦ 15 JUN 2026 (MON) 10:30-12:30

Geography Distinguished Seminar Series

Management of Sustainable Consumption

Date: 15 JUN 2026 (Monday)

Time: 10:30-12:30 (HKT)

Venue: Chamber, Faculty of Social Sciences, 11/F, The Jockey Club Tower, Centennial Campus, HKU

Mode: Hybrid

Via Zoom: Zoom link will be provided upon successful registration

Registration link: https://hkuems1.hku.hk/hkuems/ec_hdetail.aspx?guest=Y&ueid=107031

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Abstract:

This talk focuses on a systematic examination of how household consumption contributes to environmental footprints and how these impacts are unevenly distributed across social groups and regions. It further investigates how social heterogeneity, including population ageing, income inequality, and differences in household characteristics, shapes responses to environmental policies. Particular attention is given to pathways for a just transition, especially policy designs that combine carbon taxation with income redistribution to balance environmental effectiveness and social equity. By integrating macro-level input–output models with micro-level household survey data, the talk presents empirical evidence across multiple scales and countries. It highlights how consumption-based environmental accounting can inform more equitable and effective sustainability policies. The presentation draws on two papers published in Nature and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in 2024, as well as a manuscript currently under review at Nature Climate Change.

Professor Laixiang Sun

Professor of Geographical Economics, University of Maryland, College Park, USA

Professor Laixiang Sun received his PhD from Erasmus University Rotterdam in the Netherlands. He is currently Professor of Geographical Economics at the University of Maryland, College Park, USA. He has previously served, or concurrently serves, as Professor in the Department of Financial and Management Studies at SOAS University of London, Senior Visiting Scholar at the Guanghua School of Management, Peking University, Senior Researcher at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) in Vienna, Austria, and Visiting Professor at Shandong University and the Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences. In February 2010, Professor Sun was elected Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in the United Kingdom. He has published more than 240 research papers in leading international academic journals and other scholarly outlets, including Nature, PNAS, Nature Sustainability, Nature Climate Change, Nature Food, Nature Water, Nature Cities, and Science Bulletin, among others. He has also served as principal investigator or chief scientist for more than 30 international research projects.

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