Study On Urban Residential Low-carbon Consumption Behavior And Its Influencing Factors

With the rapid development of the global economy, problems such asenvironmental pollution, global warming and resource depletion are emerging. ThusChina’s economic development in the future tends to depend on low-carbon economywhich is based on low-carbon technology and changes the way of production andconsumption. As an irreplaceable part of low-carbon economy, low-carbonconsumption has attracted public attention. We are going to explore possible factorsthat can influence low-carbon consumption and then the effective ways to lead peopleto choose low-carbon consumption.First, the connotation of low-carbon consumption is described. We summarizethe definitions and characteristics of low-carbon consumption behaviors from fiverespects including clothing, food, housing, transportation and other consumptionhabits, and analyze the current situation of urban residents’ low-carbon consumptionwith reference to researches both at home and abroad. We find out that these problemsare common: incomplete development of low-carbon consumption habits, lack ofknowledge on low-carbon consumption, the decreasing low-carbon consumption ratiodue to the increasing income and so on. Furthermore, we establish a model offactors that can influence low-carbon consumption behaviors. In this model, thedependent variable is urban residents’ low-carbon consumption behaviors and theindependent variables are personalities, situations and demographics. In addition, wecollect massive data through questionnaires and use ANOVA, ANOM, Multipleregression and Hierarchical multiple regression to do empirical researches.Researches suggest that the major factors that influence different kinds oflow-carbon consumption behaviors are different and so are their influences;personalities are superior to situations as predictors; situations act as the directinfluencing factor as well as a moderator variable in the relation between low-carbonconsumption behavior and personalities, but the moderation is not obvious.Finally, based on the results of empirical researches, we give our policysuggestions including economic incentives and political commands and hope theyhelp in leading city dwellers to develop low-carbon consumption habits.