Unveiling Key Drivers of Indirect Carbon Emissions of Chinese Older Households

Abstract

The rapid urbanization and growing population aging have become salient features in China. Understanding their impacts on household emissions is crucial for designing mitigation policies for household carbon emissions. By integrating Chinese older household survey data with an unconditional quantile regression model, this paper examines the heterogeneous impacts of household characteristics on indirect carbon emissions of older Chinese households. There are three main findings: (1) The effects of urbanization on emissions at different quantiles of carbon emissions appear to be inverted U-shaped, which means that the rise of urbanization level increases carbon emissions more at the middle than at the bottom or the top, and helps to alleviate carbon emission inequality, (2) though carbon emissions rise with the increase of income, there is a clear urban-rural divide in the effects of income on carbon emissions, and (3) the rise in the share of well-educated people contributes to the increase in carbon emissions. The higher the degree of education is, the larger the impact is. These findings contribute to understanding the determinants of carbon emissions and are helpful for policymakers to design targeted policies in reducing carbon emissions from the consumption-side.Sustainability 2019, 11, 5740 2 of 17 reduction target. China is the largest emitter of CO 2 in the world, and it has recently laid a strong emphasis on the promotion of domestic consumption and economic growth, which will continuously give rise to the direct and indirect CO 2 emissions from households. Considering that indirect CO 2 emissions are responsible for a major part of the total emissions, the carbon emission reduction target cannot be fulfilled without special attention to the increasing indirect carbon emissions.It is of vital significance to study the determinants of indirect CO 2 emissions of Chinese older households. China is experiencing both rapid urbanization and growing population aging, which have a crucial influence on carbon emissions. In addition to the significant impact of urbanization on resident consumption and carbon emissions, there is evidence that the rapid shrinking of the younger generation and the rapid growth in the older population will put increasing pressure on the environment [9,10]. Meanwhile, the consumption behavior of older people is clearly different from that of other groups, and it is predicted that changes in age structure in the coming decades will affect household consumption patterns and the related carbon emissions in many countries [11].This paper synthesizes three corpus of literature on household energy consumption or carbon emissions. First, some studies focus on approaches to quantify the indirect carbon emissions from household consumption activities. In summary, three kinds of major approaches are widely used in different countries or regions [12], which are the input-output model, the life cycle assessment method, and the consumer lifestyle approach. Based on the input-output model, Yuan et al...

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