Soft factors, spatial structure and carbon dioxide emission from car-related commuting in Poland

Keywords: CO2 emission, commuting, urban structure, Poland
Abstract Type: Paper Abstract

Abstract

Commuting patterns and travel behavior, and thus the related CO2 emission, hinge on the socioeconomic characteristics of individuals and households and on the features of the city structure. Unfortunately, most investigations on the relationship between the ‘soft’ factors and the transport-related CO2 emission are confined to one city/city-region; consequently, the potential effects of the regional structure remain unexplored. On the other hand, those researches that lay emphasis on the effects of urban form (or spatial structure in general) commonly rely on aggregated statistical information which precludes to distinguish between individual effects. With this in mind, the aim of this paper is to investigate the joint effect of the ‘soft’ characteristics of individuals and households and the ‘hard’ characteristics of the local and regional spatial structures on the CO2 emission from car-related commuting to work in 54 city-regions in Poland, in 2015. Our research relies on the micro-data from the travel-behavior survey. To provide the characteristics of the local and regional spatial structure we make use of statistical information on municipalities (gminas) from the Central Statistical Office (CSO). We use sample selection regression models to estimate the effects of the ‘soft’ and the ‘hard’ factors on the CO2 emission. While the features of individuals/households are significant predictors, the CO2 emission from commuting seems to be lower in the more densely populated settings and in the more polycentric city-regions.