Spatial Pattern of Transportation Carbon Emission based on Behavior Zones: Evidence from Beijing, China

Abstract

Reducing daily transportation carbon emission is one of the main tasks for accomplishing low carbon city. Most existing studies have evaluated transportation carbon emission from industrial structure or micro-economic viewpoint, such as the efficiency of public transportation, work and home relationship, and modal choice of personal trips, but studies on the general impact of personal behaviors on transportation carbon emission is inadequate. A main reason of this relies on the lack of an appropriate spatial unit for integrating people's greatly diversified behaviors. This study proposes the concept of 'behavior zone' (BZ) based on homogeneous assumption of behaviors, in order to analyze people's traffic behavior and its carbon emission effect by sub-areas. With a survey analysis of the characteristics of people's daily trips in Beijing's sample residential areas, the critical indices of BZ are identified including housing price, development intensity and population density, and access to public transportation. With these indices, Beijing is classified into five BZ types, where the modal choice behaviors of inhabitants are projected. Then the total environmental impact of daily trips is estimated based on carbon emission levels of various traffic modes. The results provide a plenty of implications for low carbon strategies such as intensity control by floor-area-ratios and household densities, and adjustment of public transportation services.