Effects of urbanization on freight transport carbon emissions in China: Common characteristics and regional disparity

Abstract

China's socioeconomic development, including urbanization, is now facing a key challenge of reducing carbon emissions. This study analyzes the driving factors of freight transport carbon emissions and the effects of urbanization on freight transport carbon emissions in China. The spatial durbin model (SDM)-stochastic impacts by regression on population, affluence, and technology (STIRPAT) model and geographically weighted regression model (GWR)-STIRPAT model are constructed to analyze the common characteristics and regional disparity of the above effects in China. The results show that: (1) The total amount of freight carbon emissions in China has increased from 3.7352 Mt in 1988 to 96.4158 Mt in 2016. Road freight is the largest increasing sub-sector of carbon emissions in the freight transport sector. (2) Urbanization level has a positive impact on road and aviation transport carbon emissions and has a significant negative impact on railway and waterway transport carbon emissions in some provinces, but has a positive impact on their neighboring provinces. There is a significant regional disparity in multi-freight transport carbon emissions. (3) The carbon emissions of freight transport have a characteristic of “path dependence”. The population size and energy intensity have a significant impact on freight carbon emissions. Different from waterway freight, there is an inverted U-shape relationship between the carbon emissions of railway, road, aviation freight and per capita GDP. We provide policy implications based on the findings, which is expected to contribute to the carbon emissions reduction in China's transportation industry.