Abstract: To address environmental degradation and resource exhausting caused by traditional consuming pattern, an optimal green consumption model aiming to maximize social welfare has been built to uncover optimizing paths of green consumption under the equilibrium state. In the proposed mode, environmental resources stock E has been taken into account with a constraint condition of environmental externality. Simulation results under divergent capital elasticity α, the carrying capacity of environmental resources ē, and coefficient of environmental pollution ε and initial value of the green consumption V0 have been drawn based on the proposed model. The findings indicate that: (1) the green consumption V increases and decreases monotonically over time when V0 is lower and higher than VC, respectively, and converges to VC; (2) ē is positively correlated to the green consumption V, yet is negatively correlated to the ratio of green consumption V/(C+V), which plays more significant role in greening the traditional consumption pattern; (3) α is negatively correlated with the ratio of the green consumption V/(C+V), and reaches its peak growth rate when α=0.18. However, a positive correlation exits between the environmental pollution coefficients and the ratio of the green consumption.

Key words: green consumption, environmental resources, consumption path, Solow Model