Habit-locked-in carbon-air-pollutant emissions dominate China's household footprints
4 affiliations
- 1Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Environmental Pollution Control and Remediation Technology, School of Environmental Science and Engineering, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, 510006, China; Institute of Carbon Neutrality and Green Development (CNGD), Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, 510275, China
- 2Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Manchester, Oxford Road, Manchester, M13 9PL, United Kingdom
- 3Ministry of Education Key Laboratory for Earth System Modeling, Department of Earth System Science, Tsinghua University, Beijing, 100084, China
- 4Guangdong-Hongkong-Macau Joint Laboratory of Collaborative Innovation for Environmental Quality, College of Environment and Climate, Jinan University, Guangzhou, 511486, China
Abstract
Household consumption is a major driver of global carbon and air-pollutant emissions. As living standards rise, everyday routines become entrenched and reduce the responsiveness of demand to mitigation policies. Consumption-based accounting has traced these burdens through supply chains, yet the scale of emissions that remain locked in by behavioral inertia has stayed poorly quantified. Here we show that locked-in emissions of carbon and air pollutants account for nearly 84% of total household-driven emissions of CO 2 , PM 2.5 , NO x , and SO 2 across China, far exceeding the contribution of net consumption growth. Food exhibits the highest locked-in share (approximately 97%), followed by residential expenditure (84–86%). Per-capita habit-locked emissions peak in East and North China, with 32–53% of these emissions originating in the production systems of Nei Mongol and Shandong. Scenario analysis to 2035 reveals that under business-as-usual scenario, habit-locked CO 2 emissions peak around 2030, while habit-locked air-pollutant emissions decline, whereas the deepest and most balanced reductions, 1285 Mt CO 2 together with 218 kt PM 2.5 , 729 kt SO 2 , and 126 kt NO x , occur only when carbon-neutrality-oriented policies are paired with attenuated consumption inertia. These findings demonstrate that efficient demand-side synergistic mitigation in China requires systematic substitution of habit-locked carbon and air-pollutant emissions with lower-emission, affordable alternatives.
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BibTeX
@article{zhang2026habitlockedin,
title = {{Habit-locked-in carbon-air-pollutant emissions dominate China's household footprints}},
author = {Zhihui Zhang and Huihui Long and Dan Tong and Xuemei Wang and Shaoqing Chen},
journal = {Environmental Science and Ecotechnology},
year = {2026},
month = sep,
doi = {10.1016/j.ese.2026.100757},
url = {https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ese.2026.100757},
note = {CC BY},
}
RIS
TY - JOUR
TI - Habit-locked-in carbon-air-pollutant emissions dominate China's household footprints
AU - Zhihui Zhang
AU - Huihui Long
AU - Dan Tong
AU - Xuemei Wang
AU - Shaoqing Chen
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/09/01
JO - Environmental Science and Ecotechnology
DO - 10.1016/j.ese.2026.100757
UR - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ese.2026.100757
AB - Household consumption is a major driver of global carbon and air-pollutant emissions. As living standards rise, everyday routines become entrenched and reduce the responsiveness of demand to mitigation policies. Consumption-based accounting has traced these burdens through supply chains, yet the scale of emissions that remain locked in by behavioral inertia has stayed poorly quantified. Here we show that locked-in emissions of carbon and air pollutants account for nearly 84% of total household-driven emissions of CO 2 , PM 2.5 , NO x , and SO 2 across China, far exceeding the contribution of net consumption growth. Food exhibits the highest locked-in share (approximately 97%), followed by residential expenditure (84–86%). Per-capita habit-locked emissions peak in East and North China, with 32–53% of these emissions originating in the production systems of Nei Mongol and Shandong. Scenario analysis to 2035 reveals that under business-as-usual scenario, habit-locked CO 2 emissions peak around 2030, while habit-locked air-pollutant emissions decline, whereas the deepest and most balanced reductions, 1285 Mt CO 2 together with 218 kt PM 2.5 , 729 kt SO 2 , and 126 kt NO x , occur only when carbon-neutrality-oriented policies are paired with attenuated consumption inertia. These findings demonstrate that efficient demand-side synergistic mitigation in China requires systematic substitution of habit-locked carbon and air-pollutant emissions with lower-emission, affordable alternatives.
SN - 2666-4984
ER -