Does household lifestyle impact the decarbonization effect of carbon generalized system of preferences? Evidence from household survey in China

Abstract

The household carbon emissions (HCEs) account for a large proportion of China’s overall carbon emissions. The Carbon Generalized System of Preferences (CGSP) plays a pivotal role in transforming household lifestyle, aiming at reducing HCEs. Previous research on the CGSP are limited to analysis its public acceptance, with less emphasis on analysis its mitigating effect on HCEs. Therefore, this study explores the mitigating effect of CGSP on HCEs and discover the underlying mechanism of household lifestyle by using the Double Machine Learning (DML) method. We further analyze the heterogeneous effects on different household income levels, urban and rural areas, and consumption categories. Our benchmark regression analysis demonstrates that CGSP effectively mitigates HCEs. After categorizing household lifestyle into household consumption upgrading (HCU) and household sustainable lifestyle (HSL), we find that the HCU negatively affects the relationship between CGSP and HCEs, whereas HSL enhance the effectiveness of reducing HCEs. The heterogeneity analysis results reveal that CGSP is more effective for households at the lowest, higher and highest income levels and has a stronger impact on carbon emissions for urban households compared to their rural counterparts. Additionally, the CGSP has heterogeneous mitigation effects across consumption categories, with significant impacts on food, residential utilities, facilities, transport and communication, recreation-education-culture, and other services. These findings provide quantitative insights into the implementation of CGSP in China.