Spatial Patterns and Driving Factors of Urban Residential Embedded Carbon Emissions: An Empirical Study in Kaifeng, China

With the continuous improvement in living standards and great changes in lifestyles, more attention is being paid to the embedded carbon emissions produced by human consumption. With large sample data and high-resolution remote sensing images, we explored the spatial differentiation and influencing factors of household embedded carbon emissions within the city fine scale using the EIO-LCA model, spatial autocorrelation analysis and standard deviation ellipse, quantile regression, etc. The results indicate that the spatial dependence is more obvious than the characteristics of spatial heterogeneity; the high-value area of household embedded carbon emissions gathers in new development zones in cities that are expanding rapidly, mainly with residents in large number of newly-built commercial housing families and the relative’s courtyard of institutions. The factors of family characteristics, housing characteristics, lifestyles, and consumption concept have significant effects on the embedded carbon emissions of each person. The influencing intensity of most factors showed an increasing trend with increased carbon emissions. The study verified the impact of urban sprawl on residential carbon emissions and the applicability of the situated lifestyles theory in the construction of urban low-carbon communities in China.