RESEARCH ON THE DIFFERENTIATION OF URBAN RESIDENTS’ LOW CARBON TRAVEL INTENTIONS

The literature on low-carbon travel (LCT) of urban residents regards urban residents as homogeneous individuals and lacks quantitative delineation of the disparities in LCT intentions among different residents. Therefore, this study aims to use Chinese cities as cases to comprehensively investigate the influencing factors and interaction mechanisms of the LCT intentions of urban residents in different regions with different characteristics. First, based on the theory of planned behavior, this study comprehensively considers the inner psychological factors and external factors, selects five psychological latent variables and designs a questionnaire to obtain the LCT intentions data in cities of Shenzhen and Xi’an in China. Secondly, according to the LCT intention data, the residents of Shenzhen and Xi’an are divided into three classes: low intention, medium intention, and high intention. Finally, structural equation models are constructed for different classes of urban residents to investigate the key factors influencing their choices of LCT. The findings indicate that the influencing factors and influencing mechanisms of LCT intentions vary among residents of different intention classes. For residents with low and high intentions, acceptance attitude and subjective norms are the key factors affecting the LCT intentions; for residents with medium intentions, policy perception is the key factor.