Inequality of household carbon emissions and its influencing factors: Case study of urban China

When looking at emission reduction at the consumption side, the differentiation of energy consumers should be taken into account, since ignoring individual difference would easily result in social inequality and decrease of social welfare. Based on the framework of social practice model, this article estimated the quantitative distribution characteristics of urban household carbon emissions from different cities, and analyzed the influencing factors of household daily energy consumption and carbon emissions. The main results indicate that urban household carbon emission is close to 60/40 or 70/40 distribution, the economic features of different regions may contribute to such unequal distribution to a large extent. Space heating (in the north area) was found to be the largest CO₂ emission source among various daily energy use practices in the Northern cities. In general, it was found that household carbon emissions tend to increase with rising levels of income and ownerships of assets like car or house in particular; besides, individual cognition and household lifestyle would partly affect their energy selection and daily consumption behavior.