Journal of Cleaner Production 277 (2020) 124071

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Journal of Cleaner Production

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jclepro

Using decision tree analysis to identify the determinants of residents’

CO2 emissions from different types of trips: A case study of
Guangzhou, China
Wenyue Yang a, Suhong Zhou b, c, d, *
a
College of Forestry and Landscape Architecture, South China Agricultural University, Guangzhou, 510642, China
b
School of Geography and Planning, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, 510275, China
c
Guangdong Provincial Engineering Research Center for Public Security and Disaster, Guangzhou, 510275, China
d
Guangdong Key Laboratory for Urbanization and Geo-simulation, Guangzhou, 510275, China

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Understanding the influencing factors of residents’ CO2 emissions from travel is of importance for
Received 25 March 2020 developing low-carbon transportation and land-use policies. Based on the 2015 travel survey data of
Received in revised form Guangzhou, China, and decision tree analysis, this study identifies the determinants of CO2 emissions
28 August 2020
from different types of trips by quantifying the relative importance of the influencing factors. The results
Accepted 31 August 2020
Available online 6 September 2020
show that for different types of trips, the factors influencing CO2 emissions vary. Socio-demographics
have more significant impacts on CO2 emissions from commuting and social trips than neighborhood
^ as de
Handling editor: Cecilia Maria Villas Bo built environments, while for CO2 emissions from recreational and daily shopping trips, built environ-
Almeida ments have more significant impacts than socio-demographics. Car ownership is the most crucial
determinant of CO2 emissions for almost all types of trips except shopping trips that are most affected by
Keywords: built environments around neighborhoods, like distance to city public centers and bus stop density. The
CO2 emissions findings in our study confirm that there are complex interactions between the neighborhood built
Decision tree analysis environment and the socio-demographics of residents, and some of these factors have non-linear effects.
Classification tree
Positive and proper planning intervention on residential built environments is one of the critical means
Interaction
to achieve carbon emissions reduction goals.
Built environment
© 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
Against the background of global warming, rapid urbanization
and motorization development, carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions
from transport have become an essential issue for urban low-
carbon and sustainable development (Feng et al., 2014; Mi et al.,
2019; Yang et al., 2019). According to the latest report of the In-
ternational Energy Agency (IEA), the total amount of CO2 emitted
worldwide in 2017 was up to 32839.86 Mt, 24.48% of which was
from the transport sector, the second-largest sector (IEA, 2019).
Moreover, the transport sector was the fastest-growing sector of
carbon emissions, and many scholars regarded it as the most
problematic sector for mitigating carbon emissions (Batur et al.,
* Corresponding author. School of Geography and Planning, Sun Yat-sen Uni-
versity, Guangzhou, 510275, China.
E-mail addresses: yangwenyue900780@163.com (W. Yang), eeszsh@mail.sysu.
edu.cn (S. Zhou).
2019; Pietzcker et al., 2014; Schwanen et al., 2011; Yang et al.,
2015; Zhang et al., 2018). Carbon emissions reduction in trans-
portation involves many aspects such as society, economy, space,
environment, technology, policy, and culture (Geels, 2012). It is also
one of the critical objectives for urban planners and transport
policymakers all over the world committed to building sustainable
cities and transportation (Banister et al., 2012).
China is the world’s largest carbon emissions producer, sur-
passing the United States in 2007, and its total carbon emissions
from the transport sector rank second in the world(IEA, 2010,
2019). With the development of the economy and the increasing
popularity of cars, China’s transportation carbon emissions will
continue to grow (Feng et al., 2009; Li and Qin, 2019; Mi et al., 2017;
Xu and Lin, 2015; Yang et al., 2015), which will make the carbon
emissions reduction goals of the Paris Agreement face severe
challenges (Cai et al., 2018; Mi et al., 2016; Pan et al., 2018; Shan
et al., 2017; Wang et al., 2017). At present, many cities in China
have entered the stage of suburbanization and sprawl

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2020.124071
0959-6526/© 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
2 W. Yang, S. Zhou / Journal of Cleaner Production 277 (2020) 124071
development. Many new towns and suburbs have the apparent
characteristics of large blocks and wide roads and have abandoned
the traditional neighborhood development model oriented around
walking and public transit. Low-density, single, and decentralized
land-use patterns have led to a significant increase in residents’
travel distance and car use, emitting a large amount of CO2 (Cao,
2017; Luo et al., 2017; Rong et al., 2018; Yang and Cao, 2018;
Zhao, 2010, 2013). Therefore, it is necessary to explore the influ-
encing factors of residents’ CO2 emissions from travel in urban
China, where the built environment is quite different from that in
Western countries, and people have unique travel modes and
preferences (Wang and Lin, 2014).
In recent years, studies have quantitatively measured the
influencing factors of residents’ CO2 emissions from travel using a
disaggregate approach (Barla et al., 2011; Brand et al., 2013; Cao and
Yang, 2017; Ma et al., 2015; Yang et al., 2018; Yang and Cao, 2018).
However, most of these studies focus on the linear relationship
between these factors and CO2 emissions, and less on the non-
linear relationship and the possible interactions between factors.
Moreover, few explored, for different types of trips, whether the
neighborhood built environment or the socio-demographics of
residents has a more significant impact on CO2 emissions. To
address these two scientific issues, this study employs a decision
tree approach to explore the relationship between influencing
factors and CO2 emissions and quantitatively measures the relative
importance of each influencing factor for different types of trips.
The remainder of the paper is organized as follows. The next
section briefly reviews the literature on travel behavior and its’
related CO2 emissions. Section 3 introduces the methodology and
data used in the analysis. Section 4 presents the results of the de-
cision tree analysis. The final section summarizes the key findings
and provides policy implications.
2. Literature review
Existing studies in the field of travel behavior mainly focus on
the following travel “outcome” variables: trip frequency, trip
length, mode choice or modal split, and cumulative measures like
person miles traveled (PMT), vehicle miles traveled (VMT) or
vehicle hours traveled (VHT) (Ewing and Cervero, 2001, 2010).
Ewing and Cervero (2001), at the beginning of the 21st century,
conducted a systematic review of the majority of the empirical
studies related to travel behavior and summarized that trip fre-
quency was mainly influenced by the socio-demographics of trav-
elers, followed by built environments, while the trip length was
mainly impacted by built environments, followed by socio-
demographics; both socio-demographics and built environments
simultaneously determined mode choice, but the former had a
more significant impact; for the overall VMT or VHT, they were
affected by built environments much more significantly. Almost ten
years later, Ewing and Cervero (2010) carried out a meta-analysis
on the literature of travel and the built environment. The results
in their new study were consistent with that of the previous one.
They found that the combined effect of built environment variables
on travel outcomes was quite significant. However, these reviews
did not cover empirical studies related to CO2 emissions from
travel, which is also a non-negligible outcome determined com-
binedly by travel distance, modal split, emissions factor, etc.,
reflecting the environmental cost of travel.
The study of Brand and his co-authors (Brand and Boardman,
2008; Brand and Preston, 2010) found that there were a consider-
able difference and unequal distribution in greenhouse gas emis-
sions from personal travel among individuals in the UK. They
summed up the “61%e20% emission” rule, which meant the highest
20% of emitters producing 61% of emissions. Similar results have
been found in the Netherlands and South Korea. A study by Susilo
and Stead (2009) found that, in the Netherlands, about 10% of the
population was responsible for almost half of all CO2 emissions
from travel. Ko et al. (2011) also found that the top 10% of emitters
in the Seoul metropolitan area (SMA) accounted for 63% of the total
CO2 emissions. Besides this, a study by (Modarres, 2013) in Los
Angeles and Orange Counties showed that there were also differ-
ences among social groups in transportation energy consumption,
which generated significant community differences in trans-
portation energy consumption through the cohabitation of social
groups. The above studies showed that CO2 emissions from travel
had substantial individual differences, which were strongly asso-
ciated with emitters’ socio-demographic characteristics. Gender,
age, household size, education, income, employment status, occu-
pation, and car ownership had different degrees of impact on the
amount of an individual’s CO2 emissions from travel (Barla et al.,
2011; Brand et al., 2013; Brand and Preston, 2010; Ko et al., 2011;
Zahabi et al., 2012).
As for the relationship between the built environment and CO2
emissions from travel, the majority of the empirical studies
generally demonstrated that residential density, land-use mix,
transit accessibility, and road network density (or road intersection
density) were negatively correlated with motor vehicle use,
transport energy consumption and carbon emissions (Alford and
Whiteman, 2009; Brownstone and Golob, 2009; Hong and
Goodchild, 2014; Song et al., 2016; Zahabi et al., 2012). Neverthe-
less, for the empirical study areas with different environmental
backgrounds, the above research conclusions may be differentiated
to some extent (Cao and Yang, 2017; Yang et al., 2018; Yang and Cao,
2018). For example, Brand et al. (2013)’s study in the UK showed
that the relationship between residential density and CO2 emis-
sions from travel is insignificant. The study of Yang et al. (Yang et al.,
2018; Yang and Cao, 2018) found that the effects of built environ-
ments such as residential density, land-use mix, bus stop density
varied for different types of trips. Also, some scholars have stated
that the relationship between the built environment and carbon
emissions from travel may be non-linear, and threshold effects exist
(Hong, 2015; Wu et al., 2019).
Overall, few studies have distinguished different types of trips to
measure the effects of these factors on CO2 emissions from different
types of trips(Brand et al., 2013; Ma et al., 2015; Yang and Cao,
2018). Furthermore, these studies mainly conducted linear regres-
sion models to measure the coefficients of explanatory variables
and paid less attention to their non-linear relationship. Decision
tree analysis is an effective method to explore non-linear re-
lationships and was first used in medical and sociological research
in the 1960s (Morgan and Sonquist, 1963). As an advanced method,
it is relatively new and rarely used in the field of travel and carbon
emissions study compared with other modeling methods, like
multivariate regression model, logistic regression model, and
structural equation model. To narrow the gap mentioned above, it
is of high academic significance to examine the interaction among
the influencing factors of CO2 emissions from different types of
trips with decision tree analysis, which will also have practical
implications for planners and policymakers to develop low-carbon
land use and transportation planning and policies.
3. Methodology
3.1. Study area and data
This study takes Guangzhou, China, as the study area, and se-
lects 15 neighborhoods to conduct a survey (Fig. 1). In order to
ensure the representativeness of neighborhood selection for the
survey and reduce the sample deviation, we take into account
 W. Yang, S. Zhou / Journal of Cleaner Production 277 (2020) 124071
Fig. 1. Study area and neighborhoods surveyed.
differences between neighborhood built environments. Six built
environment variables were considered in this study. They are
distance to city public centers (DTC), residential density (RD), land-
use mix (LUM), bus stop density (BSD), metro station density
(MSD), and road network density (RND). We depicted the data
distribution of built environments of 15 neighborhoods surveyed as
well as the correlation between them in Fig. 2, from which we can
see that these neighborhoods were varied on the built environment
because the data points of all these six elements were not
concentrated on some values. These six built environment variables
were measured by the GIS method, the same as the previous
studies(Cao and Yang, 2017; Yang et al., 2017; Yang and Cao, 2018).
Specifically, DTC was the average Euclidean distance from the
centroid of the neighborhood to 16 municipal public centers in the
study area. RD was calculated by dividing the residential population
by neighborhood area. LUM was measured by the method similar to
that employed in previous studies (Frank et al., 2004;
Moniruzzaman et al., 2013), but we used points of interest (POIs),
which included 13 types and precise location information, instead
of the land use in their studies. BSD and MSD were measured by the
method of kernel density(Silverman, 1986), and RND was measured
by the method of line density in ArcGIS 10.2 (ERIS, 2013),
respectively.
The survey was carried out from May 2015 to July 2015 after a
pre-survey in March 2015 with feedback, revision, and improve-
ment of questionnaire design. We used face-to-face and random
interception survey methods. The subjects were adults aged 16e65
who had lived in these neighborhoods for more than half a year. We
eventually collected 1345 questionnaires, of which 1239 were valid.
The data collected by the questionnaire survey included the
3
demographics and socio-economics of residents, and their travel
information for four types of trips: commuting, social trip, recrea-
tional trip, and daily shopping trip. We finally collected 1239 pairs,
726 pairs, 702 pairs, and 712 pairs of O-D (Origin-Destination)
points for commuting trips, social trips, recreational trips, and
shopping trips, respectively. The socio-demographic characteristics
of the sample population can be seen in Table 1.
3.2. Estimation of CO2 emissions from trips
In this study, we estimated the CO2 emissions from trips based
on the O-D points we collected in the survey. In order to improve
the accuracy of the estimation of CO2 emissions, we applied the
Travel O-D point Intelligent Query System (TIQS) which was
developed based on the Baidu map LBS open platform to calculate
the path of each OD trip, and divided it into two parts: motorized
travel path and non-motorized travel path. The specific calculation
process and operation principle of TIQS can be found in our pre-
vious studies(Yang et al., 2017; Yang and Cao, 2018).
In a real trip, except for walking or cycling, travel using motor-
ized modes are often accompanied by non-motorized travel (Fig. 3).
For example, residents who go to work by bus, in most cases, need
to walk or ride bicycles from their residence to the bus stop before
taking the bus. After getting off, they need to continue walking or
bicycling to the workplace. Moreover, the transfer may also be
involved in the process of public transport. For example, getting off
at one bus stop/metro station and walking a certain distance to
another stop or station to transfer to other lines of public transport.
During this process, a certain distance of a non-motorized trip will
be generated, and this non-motorized trip does not emit CO2.
Therefore, we should exclude these non-motorized travel distances
when calculating travel CO2 emissions, and the formulas for esti-
mating CO2 emissions in this study are as follows:
TCij ¼ MTDijm  EFm (1)
MTDijm ¼ TDijm-NTDijm (2)
where TCij is the CO2 emissions from trip j for resident i, MTDijm is
the motorized travel distance in this trip with travel mode m, and
EFm denotes the CO2 emission factor corresponding to the travel
mode m used in this motorized travel (Table 2). TDijm is the total
travel distance of trip j for resident i with travel mode m, and NTDijm
is the non-motorized travel distance of this trip. When a resident
uses non-motorized travel modes (like walking or bicycling)
throughout the whole trip, TDijm equals NTDijm, that is, MTDijm and
TCij equal 0. When we input the latitude and longitude coordinates
of a pair of O-D points of a trip and the corresponding travel mode
into TIQS, it will automatically calculate the total travel distance
(TDijm) and non-motorized travel distance (NTDijm) of this trip by
calling the real-time traffic condition data of the Baidu Map
background.
Based on the above CO2 emissions estimation method, we
calculated the CO2 emissions from each trip. Cumulative distribu-
tion function (CDF) curves were used to depict the distribution of
CO2 emissions in these four types of trips (Fig. 4.). It was found that
there were inflection points around CDF ¼ 0.8, although there
would be some differences among different types of trips. That is,
for a specific type of trip, 20% of the samples (residents) who emit
the most CO2 emissions were responsible for around 80% of the CO2
emitted by the overall sample. Therefore, in this paper, we classified
this 20% of the sample as high carbon emitters for each type of trip,
respectively, and we built decision trees to explore what factors
make these residents become high carbon emitters while other
residents do not.
4 W. Yang, S. Zhou / Journal of Cleaner Production 277 (2020) 124071
Fig. 2. Distribution of scatter plots among built environment variables in neighborhoods surveyed.
3.3. Decision tree analysis
The decision tree analysis is an analytical method widely used in
the field of data mining, which creates a tree-based classification
model that classifies cases or predicts values of a dependent
(target) variable based on values of independent (predictor) vari-
ables. Decision tree analysis has strengths in identifying the de-
terminants compared with traditional regression modeling. First,
no specific rules are required on the format of the data, and it can be
used to explore continuous independent variables as well as cate-
gorical variables, even multivariate disordered categorical variables
(Kheir et al., 2010; Lussier et al., 2019). Second, decision tree anal-
ysis is a nonparametric statistical method that has no specification
of a functional form and does not have any strict assumptions about
the distribution of data (Tehrany et al., 2013; Zhan et al., 2016).
Third, it can examine the interaction effect among independent
variables and address the issue of multicollinearity (Elith et al.,
2008; Wu et al., 2019).
The generation of a decision tree is an iterative procedure that
involves two processes: tree generation and tree pruning. The
process of tree generation is to classify the initial dataset level by
level until it can no longer be divided or no longer needs to be
divided according to certain partitioning conditions, to generate the
tree adequately. Specifically, in each classification, the model
compares the differences of each branch obtained by using
different independent variables as the classification variables and
selects the independent variables that make the most considerable
differences as the classification variables of the node. The above
process may generate huge trees that require pruning to reduce the
tree nodes, control the complexity of the tree, and measure the
complexity by the number of leaf nodes of the tree (Huang and
Wang, 2014).
According to the type of dependent variable, tree models can be
divided into two categories: classification tree and regression tree.
The commonly used algorithms include CRT (Classification and
Regression Trees), CHAID (Chi-square Automatic Interaction De-
tector), and QUEST (Quick, Unbiased, Efficient, and Statistical Tree)
(Roe et al., 2005; Zhang and Zhong, 2013). In this study, whether a
resident is a high carbon emitter or not was set as the dependent
variable (binary variable: 1 ¼ high carbon emitter; 0 ¼ non-high
carbon emitter), and CRT algorithm was used to construct the tree
mode, which splits the data into segments and attempts to maxi-
mize within-node homogeneity for the value of the dependent
variable (Breiman et al., 1984). During this process, the Gini index
was used as an indicator to measure the impurity of split nodes,
maximizing the homogeneity of the child nodes.
For any node t in the tree, the Gini index g(t) is calculated as
follows:
X
gðtÞ ¼ pðjjtÞpðijtÞ (3)
jsi
pðjjtÞ ¼ pðj; tÞ=pðtÞ (4)

pðj; tÞ ¼ pðjÞNj ðtÞ Nj (5)
 W. Yang, S. Zhou / Journal of Cleaner Production 277 (2020) 124071 5

Table 1
Socio-demographic characteristics of the sample population.

Domain Variable Level N (%)

Demographic Gender 0 for male 694 (56.01%)

1 for female 545 (43.99%)
Age 1 represents age 16-24 137 (11.06%)
2 represents age 25-34 605 (48.83%)
3 represents age 35-44 426 (34.38%)
4 represents age 45 71 (5.73%)
Any child under 16 0 for no 414 (33.41%)
1 for yes 825 (66.59%)
Socio-economic Household size 1 represents 1 person 39 (3.15%)
2 represents 2 people 140 (11.30%)
3 represents 3 people 429 (34.62%)
4 represents 4 people 355 (28.65%)
5 represents 5 people 276 (22.28%)
Education 1 represents senior high school and below 151 (12.19%)
2 represents junior college 357 (28.81%)
3 represents bachelor’s degree 551 (44.47%)
4 represents master’s degree or above 180 (14.53%)
Employment status 1 represents full-time 1154 (93.14%)
2 represents part-time 41 (3.31%)
3 represents other 44 (3.55%)
Occupation 1 represents manager 379 (30.59%)
2 represents professional 260 (20.98%)
3 represents clerk 110 (8.88%)
4 represents private owner 150 (12.11%)
5 represents sales and service personnel 140 (11.30%)
6 represents other 200 (16.14%)
Household registration (Hukou) 0 for other cities 584 (47.13%)
1 for Guangzhou 655 (52.87%)
Household monthly incomes per capita 1 represents income 3999 RMB 129 (10.41%)
2 represents income 4000e5999 RMB 221 (17.84%)
3 represents income 6000e7999 RMB 208 (16.79%)
4 represents income 8000e9999 RMB 202 (16.30%)
5 represents income 10000e14999 RMB 208 (16.79%)
6 represents income 15000 RMB 271 (21.87%)
Car and bike ownership Car ownership 0 for no 488 (39.39%)
1 for yes 751 (60.61%)
Bike ownership 0 for no 429 (34.62%)
1 for yes 810 (65.38%)

X
pðtÞ ¼ pðj; tÞ (6)
j

where i and j represent two different classifications of the target

Fig. 3. Schematic diagram of travel routes with different travel modes.
variable, p(j) is the prior probability of category j, Nj(t) is the
number of cases of category j in node t, and Nj is the number of
cases of category j in the root node. The Gini index represents the
probability of a randomly selected sample in the sample set being
misclassified. So the smaller it is, the lower the probability that the
selected samples in the set will be misclassified, that is, the higher
the purity of the set, and vice versa.
In order to make the trees grow adequately, the minimum
number of cases for the parent node and the child node was set as
50 and 10, respectively, and the maximum tree depth was set as 5
levels. A 10-fold cross-validation method was performed in the
process of training and testing the tree models, which divides the
dataset into 10 randomly selected and roughly equal folds, each of
which serves as a separate testing dataset. For each of these 10
subsamples, a tree is constructed based on the remaining 90% of the
cases (the training samples). And another 10% of the subsamples
are treated as the test samples (Lussier et al., 2019). This procedure
was repeated 10 times. The model results of decision tress analysis
with CRT algorithm would generate two valuable indexes: impor-
tance and standardized importance of independent variables. The
6 W. Yang, S. Zhou / Journal of Cleaner Production 277 (2020) 124071

Table 2
Specific energy consumption and CO2 emissions factor for motorized travel modes.

Motorized travel modes Final energy consumption (l/100 kma, kWh/kmb) Estimated average capacity (Persons) Primary energy consumption (MJ/P$km) CO2 (g/P$km)

Passenger car (taxi) 11.0 1.3 0.84 233.1

Urban bus 35.0 40 0.35 26.0
Coach 30.0 44.0 0.27 20.3
Metro 5.0 216 0.26 20.9

Note: According to the research of Entwicklungsbank (2008) on China’s transportation CO2 emissions. CO2 emissions here refer to direct CO2 emissions. MJ is an abbreviation
for megajoule. P$km refers to person kilometer. g refers to gram.
a
Passenger car (taxi), urban bus and coach.
b
Metro only.

Fig. 4. CDF curves of CO2 emissions from commuting trips (a), social trips (b), recreational trips (c), and daily shopping trips (d).

former shows the impact of predictor variables on the target vari-
able, while the latter can be used to compare the relative impact of
such predictor variables between different models(Ding et al.,
2018; Griselda et al., 2012). All the procedures of decision tree
analysis were carried out using IBM SPSS Statistics 20.
4. Results
4.1. Classification trees for the four types of trips
4.1.1. Commuting trips
The results of the classification tree for commuting trips are
displayed in Fig. 5. The final tree structure involved six splitting
variables: car ownership, household monthly income per capita,
occupation, age, residential density, and household size. The root
node (Node 0) was first split according to the variable car owner-
ship in the first level of the tree. 31.3% of the residents who own
cars are high carbon emitters, while only 2.6% of the residents who
do not have cars are high carbon residents. In this way, the Gini
index dropped to 0.039. This also means that owning a car has a
vital impact on whether residents become high carbon-emitting
commuters.
The second split occurs on Node 2 by the household monthly
income per capita. 34.9% of the residents whose household
monthly incomes per capita is over 6000 yuan are high carbon
emitters, while only 13.6% of the residents with incomes below
 W. Yang, S. Zhou / Journal of Cleaner Production 277 (2020) 124071
Fig. 5. Classification tree for commuting trips.
6000 yuan are high carbon emitters. The Gini index fell further to
0.008 this time. Thus, the variable household monthly income per
capita has an essential influence on CO2 emissions from commuting
trips as well, and people with high incomes are more likely to be
high carbon emitters.
The third splitting occurs at Node 4 and is performed through
the variable of occupation. 40.4% of the residents whose occupa-
tions are managers, professionals, clerks, and sales and service
personnel are high carbon emitters. In comparison, only 21.7% of
the high carbon emitters are private owners and other occupations.
This indicates that residents with different occupations have indi-
vidual differences in commuting carbon emissions.
In the fourth level of the tree, Node 5 was split by age, while
Node 6 was split by residential density. The proportion of residents
over the age of 35 and those under the age of 35 who are high
carbon emitters is 51.5% and 30.4%, respectively. Only 9.6% of resi-
dents living in an area of the residential density of more than 19042
person/km2 are high carbon emitters. In comparison, 31.7% of
7
residents living in an area of the residential density of less than
19042 person/km2 are high carbon emitters.
In the fifth level of the tree, Node 8 was further split according to
residential density. The proportion of residents living in an area of
residential density over 19042 person/km2 is far less than that of
under 19042 person/km2 concerning becoming high carbon emit-
ters. This indicates that the higher the neighborhood residential
density, the more likely residents who live there would emit less
CO2 in a commuting trip. However, the split of Node 10 by resi-
dential density showed that when the density reaches a certain
level, like 59987 person/km2 in this case, residents there are more
likely to be high carbon emitters instead. This also means that the
impact of residential density on commuting carbon emissions is
non-linear, and neighborhood population density should not be
unrestrictedly increased.
4.1.2. Social trips
The results of the classification tree for social trips can be seen in
8 W. Yang, S. Zhou / Journal of Cleaner Production 277 (2020) 124071
Fig. 6. Classification tree for social trips.
Fig. 6. There are nine splitting variables and 24 nodes in this tree,
which means the tree structure and the interactions between
influencing factors of social trips are more complex than those of
commuting trips. In the first level, similar to commuting trips, the
split variable is car ownership, and 31.4% of residents with a car are
high carbon emitters, while only 2.1% of residents with no car are.
This means car ownership is also the most important influencing
factor in CO2 emissions for social trips.
Node 1 was split by metro station density. Residents living in
neighborhoods with metro station density of more than 0.241 per
km2 are not high carbon emitters. Meanwhile, the Gini index
dropped to 0.000 from 0.041, which means for the residents with
no car, whether a metro service covers their neighborhoods has
considerable importance on CO2 emissions.
The second split in Node 2 was through the household monthly
income per capita. 37.5% of the residents whose household monthly
income is more than 8000 yuan are high carbon emitters. In
comparison, 18.4% of the residents whose household monthly in-
come is less than 8000 yuan are high carbon emitters. This also
indicates that the higher the income level of residents, the more
carbon emissions they may emit from social travel. The Gini index
decreased from 0.041 to 0.010. Node 5 and Node 6 were split by bus
stop density and distance to city public centers. For people who
have a car, if their neighborhood bus stop density is more than
4.653 per km2, they are more likely to become high carbon emitters
instead (24.3%), compared with a density less than 4.653 per km2
(only 2.6%). Meanwhile, another split happened to Node 8 (bus stop
density larger than 4.653 per km2) by household monthly income
per capita. In this split, 29.8% of residents whose household
monthly income per capita is between 4000 yuan and 7999 yuan
are high carbon emitters, while none of the residents whose
household monthly income per capita is lower than 4000 yuan are
high carbon emitters. This shows that there is a complex interaction
between the built environment and socio-economic factors, and
the non-linear effect of household monthly income per capita
exists.
Distance to city public centers is a major influencing factor on
CO2 emissions from social trips that split Node 6.53.1% of the resi-
dents whose neighborhoods are more than 12.75 km to city public
centers are high carbon emitters. In comparison, 31.8% of those
whose neighborhoods are less than 12.75 km to city public centers
are high carbon emitters. To Node 9 and Node 10, they were further
split by age and occupation, respectively, which shows for neigh-
borhoods, less than 12.75 km to city public centers, a more sub-
stantial proportion of their residents over the age of 35 become
high carbon emitters, and for neighborhoods, more than 12.75 km
to city public centers, 62.5% of residents who are professional,
managers, and sales and service personnel are high carbon emit-
ters, a much larger proportion than residents of other occupations.
The fifth level of the tree was split at Node 12, Node 13, Node 14,
and Node 16 through variables occupation, metro station density,
and household registration. Among them, the split result of metro
station density in Node 14 is contrary to that in Node 1, which
shows the proportion of residents whose neighborhood metro
station density is more than 0.213 per km2 becoming high carbon
emitters is higher than that of residents whose neighborhood
metro station density is less than 0.213 per km2. This shows that for
residents with cars, higher incomes, and living close to city public
centers and older than 35 years old, the higher density of metro
stations does not necessarily reduce their carbon emissions from
 W. Yang, S. Zhou / Journal of Cleaner Production 277 (2020) 124071
social trips. This further demonstrates that there is a complex
interaction between built environment variables and socio-
demographic variables, and the non-linear effect of metro station
density.
4.1.3. Recreational trips
For recreational trips, the tree model had six splitting variables,
and the first split variable was still car ownership (Fig. 7). Through
its split, Node 1, represented by residents with no car, only had 4.3%
of residents as high carbon emitters. In comparison, Node 2 rep-
resented by residents with cars had 30% of residents as high carbon
emitters. Node 1 can be further split into Node 3 and Node 4 by
household registration, and the split results showed that people
with local Hukou (household registration in Guangzhou) are more
likely to be high carbon emitters. Moreover, for people with
household registration in other cities, the proportion of residents
under the age of 25 who are high carbon emitters was also greater
than that of residents over 25 years old (the proportion is 0).
Among the residents who own cars (Node 2), the household
monthly income per capita was split first. 34.1% of residents with
household monthly income per capita of more than 6000 yuan are
Fig. 7. Classification tree for recreational trips.
9
high carbon emitters. In comparison, only 10.8% of residents with
monthly income per capita less than 6000 yuan are high carbon
emitters. In these two types of residents (Node 5 and Node 6), they
are both split by metro station density. From the results of the split,
the smaller the density of neighborhood metro stations, the greater
the proportion of residents who become high carbon emitters,
which can be inferred as subways playing a decisive role in pro-
moting low-carbon travel in recreational trips. It can also be seen
that there is an interaction between metro station density and
household monthly incomes per capita. For residents with different
income levels, the effect of metro station density is different to
some extent, which is non-linear.
In the fourth and fifth levels, Node 12 was split by distance to
city public centers, and Node 14 was, again, split by distance to city
public centers. The split results showed that the relationship be-
tween distance to city public centers and CO2 emissions from rec-
reational trips are not necessarily linear.
4.1.4. Daily shopping trips
The same as for the previous three types of trips, the tree model
of daily shopping trips was first split by car ownership as well
10 W. Yang, S. Zhou / Journal of Cleaner Production 277 (2020) 124071
Fig. 8. Classification tree for daily shopping trips.
(Fig. 8), which minimized the Gini index to 0.022. However, the
classification results of Node 1 and Node 2 also showed that the
difference in the impact on residents becoming high carbon emit-
ters between having cars and have no car in this type of trip was
less than that in the previous three types of trip. In the second level
of the tree, both Node 1 and Node 2 were split by distance to city
public centers, which indicates this variable plays a vital role in this
type of trip. Overall, the farther away the neighborhood is from the
city public centers, the more likely the resident is to become a high
carbon emitter. However, for residents with and without cars, the
role of the distance of city public centers is somewhat different,
which is attributed to its non-linear effect.
Employment status and occupation were the splitting variables
in the third level of the tree. People with no car whose employment
status is part-time are more likely to be a high carbon emitter
compared with that is those employed full-time or other. For res-
idents with full-time employment or other employment status,
residents with a bachelor’s degree or above become a higher pro-
portion of high carbon emitters, especially those living in neigh-
borhoods with a residential density of less than 13,883 person/km2.
Occupation split Node 5 and Node 6, and the results showed that
there are differences in CO2 emissions among residents with
different occupations. For residents who own cars and whose dis-
tance between neighborhood and city public centers is less than
11.56 km, the proportion of residents who work as managers, pri-
vate owners, and clerks who become high carbon emitters is more
substantial. They were further split by the variable of distance to
city public centers in the fourth level of the tree. The results of this
split showed that residents living less than 7.70 km from city public
centers are more likely to become high carbon emitters. This shows
that the distance between neighborhood and city public centers
may have different effects on residents with different occupations,
whether they become high carbon emitters in daily shopping trips
or not. This proves once again, that distance to city public centers
has a non-linear effect and a complicated relationship with the
occupation.
Node 18 was split by bus stop density at the fifth level of the tree.
It showed that for residents whose distance to city public centers is
greater than 7.70 km if the density of neighborhood bus stops is less
than 4.707 per km2, they are more likely to become high carbon
emitters. For residents who were professionals, sales and service
personnel and other occupation, and their neighborhoods’ distance
to city public centers were less than 11.56 km, the neighborhood
residential density larger than 88845 person/km2 is more likely to
make them high carbon emitters. For residents whose distance
between neighborhood and city public centers is more than
11.56 km, the proportion of residents who are professional, man-
agers, and private owners becoming high carbon emitters was
more substantial. Among them, the proportion of residents with a
bachelor’s degree or above becoming high carbon emitters would
be more extensive. For this type of trip, we can see that the role of
household monthly income per capita has declined because this
variable split no node.
 W. Yang, S. Zhou / Journal of Cleaner Production 277 (2020) 124071 11

Table 3
The relative importance of the independent variables for the four types of trips.

Domain Variable Commuting Social Recreational Daily shopping

Importance Standardized Importance Standardized Importance Standardized Importance Standardized

importance (%) importance (%) importance (%) importance (%)

Demographic Gender 0.001 2.9 0.001 2.0 0.000 0.0 0.000 0.0
Age 0.016 41.1 0.021 50.5 0.002 5.2 0.001 2.7
Any child under 16 0.003 6.5 0.001 3.2 0.000 0.0 0.000 0.0
Sum 0.02 e 0.023 e 0.002 e 0.001 e
Socio-economic Household size 0.009 21.7 0.002 4.9 0.001 4.6 0.004 14.8
Education 0.004 10.9 0.015 37.3 0.001 2.4 0.006 20.8
Employment status 0.006 15.3 0.007 17.3 0.001 1.8 0.001 4.5
Occupation 0.010 25.1 0.013 31.2 0.003 8.9 0.013 41.9
Household registration 0.005 13.8 0.005 12.9 0.001 3.2 0.001 2.6
(Hukou)
Household monthly 0.026 67.1 0.029 69.6 0.024 75.4 0.005 17.8
income per capita
Sum 0.06 e 0.071 e 0.031 e 0.03 e
Car and bike Car ownership 0.039 100.0 0.041 100.0 0.032 100.0 0.022 73.8
ownership Bike ownership 0.000 0.6 0.000 0.0 0.000 0.0 0.000 0.0
Sum 0.039 e 0.041 e 0.032 e 0.022 e
Built DTC 0.012 31.4 0.017 41.8 0.017 54.0 0.030 100.0
environment RD 0.010 25.1 0.004 11.0 0.000 0.8 0.019 63.2
LUM 0.008 19.4 0.007 16.0 0.006 19.2 0.012 41.0
BSD 0.007 17.5 0.008 20.5 0.001 2.6 0.023 77.0
MSD 0.012 29.4 0.016 38.4 0.020 64.2 0.017 56.5
RND 0.005 13.7 0.005 12.6 0.001 2.8 0.013 44.7
Sum 0.054 e 0.057 e 0.045 e 0.114 e

4.2. The relative importance of the independent variables
Table 3 compares the relative importance of the independent
variables on becoming high carbon emitters in the four types of
trip. In commuting trips, car ownership, household monthly in-
come per capita, and age were the three most important variables,
which had 100.0%, 67.1%, and 41.1% standardized importance,
respectively. Among the built environment variables, distance to
city public centers, metro station density, and residential density
are the three most influential variables.
In social trips, the relative importance of influencing factors was
similar to that in commuting trips, but there were still some dif-
ferences. For instance, household size in commuting trips was
much more critical than that in social trips, but education is more
important in social trips. This is probably because household size
has little impact on social travel, while education has a more sig-
nificant impact on social travel. For built environments, the most
critical variable in social trips was the distance to city public cen-
ters, followed by metro station density and bus stop density. Resi-
dential density was the least important variable of built
environments.
The importance of influencing factors of recreational trips and
daily shopping trips is quite different from the first two types of
trips. Age is far less important in these two types of trips than in the
first two. Household monthly income per capita is more critical in
recreational trips than the other three types of trips. However,
household size, education, employment status, and occupation are
of little importance in recreational trips, but they are more
important in daily shopping trips. Distance to city public centers is
the most crucial factor in daily shopping trips, rather than car
ownership. This may be related to the fact that a relatively small
number of daily shopping trips of residents are made by car.
Moreover, the importance of built environment variables in
daily shopping trips has increased significantly, far more significant
than for the other three types of trips. This also shows that for daily
shopping trips, the built environment has a greater impact on
residents’ carbon emissions. Gender and any child under 16 only
had a minor impact in commuting trips and social trips and even
had no impact in recreational trips and daily shopping trips. In
terms of car and bike ownership, though car ownership was the
most important factor for residents to become high carbon emitters
in the trips, bike ownership had almost no importance in these four
types of trips.
Although the previous studies had examined the association of
residents’ socio-demographics and the built environment with
carbon emissions from travel(Barla et al., 2011; Cao and Yang, 2017;
Hong and Goodchild, 2014; Ko et al., 2011; Ma et al., 2015; Song
et al., 2016; Yang et al., 2018; Yang and Cao, 2018; Zahabi et al.,
2012), few of them can tell which aspect, e.g. individuals’ socio-
economic attributes or neighborhood built environment, contrib-
utes more to CO2 emissions from travel or which ones are the key
elements. Measuring the relative importance of each influence
factor and detecting the differences between different types of trips
can help us better understand the mechanism of CO2 emissions.
5. Conclusions and policy implications
This study developed decision tree models to examine the
influencing factors of CO2 emissions and compare the relative
importance of socio-demographics and built environments for four
different types of trips. It comes to the following conclusions and
provides the following policy implications. For four types of trips
we studied, car ownership was always the variable that spilled the
decision trees in the first level and its relative importance was
much more significant than almost any other factor, indicating that
owning cars was crucial for residents becoming high carbon
emitters in daily travel. This inspires us that relevant low-carbon
policy should be primarily targeted on people who have a car
because they would emit more CO2 than that with no car. For the
sake of equity, people with cars should take more responsibility for
mitigating CO2 emissions from transport, like pay more tax or
something.
The influence and relative importance of both socio-
demographics and built environments vary from different types
of trips. For commuting trips and social trips, the sum of the relative
importance of built environment variables was smaller than that of
12 W. Yang, S. Zhou / Journal of Cleaner Production 277 (2020) 124071
socio-economic variables, let alone adding the importance of de-
mographics. However, for recreational trips and daily shopping
trips, the sum of the relative importance of built environment
variables was higher than that of demographics and socio-
economic variables. Notably, in daily shopping trips, CO2 emis-
sions were more influenced by built environments around the
neighborhood. Car ownership’s relative importance was less than
the distance to city public centers and bus stop density. This tells us
that making policies or planning should fully consider all types of
trips, rather than only taking a kind of trip like commuting trips
into account. Otherwise, it may not be able to reach productive and
positive results.
Specifically, age was the most crucial variable in demographics.
However, its impact became minimal on recreational trips and daily
shopping trips. In terms of socio-economic variables, household
monthly income per capita was the most influential variable in
commuting, social, and recreational trips. In contrast, in daily
shopping trips, the occupation was the most critical factor. This
implies that although there are differences in CO2 emissions be-
tween social groups, they also vary with different types of trips. In
neighborhood built environments, distance to city public centers
was the most crucial variable in commuting, social, and daily
shopping trips, while in recreational trips, the impact of metro
station density was greater. Other built environment variables had
a considerable effect on CO2 emissions, although there were some
differences among different types of trips. This demonstrates that
planning intervention on built environments would be workable
and effective, and it is one of the key ways to achieve carbon
emissions mitigation goals for the transport sector. Besides, there
were complex interactions between neighborhood built environ-
ments, residents’ socio-demographics, and CO2 emissions. Also,
some factors were found to have non-linear effects in our case,
which is similar to some studies in the U.S.(Hong, 2015; Wu et al.,
2019). Therefore, any policy-making and planning should not
only simply target on one or several aspects, but also consider more
complex and compound effects between them.
We acknowledge that although we examined the determinants
of residents’ CO2 emissions from different types of trips with the
use of decision tree models, some limitations and biases may leave
in our study. First, it did not cover all the potential influencing
factors of CO2 emissions from travel like costs, convenience, and
comfort of transport options, travel time of the trip, and attitude
and preference of residents, etc. We mainly focused on identifying
what influenced the CO2 emissions of different types of trips from
the aspect of demographics, socio-economics and car and bike
ownership of residents as well as the built environment so that we
could have some insights on encouraging residents’ travel behavior
change and building a low-carbon and sustainable land use and
transport pattern and provide some relevant policy implications
about transport carbon reduction. Secondly, although we got sur-
vey data of four types of trips, however, some trips might be
compound and have multiple purposes, like social and recreation at
the same time. In this case, we can only categorize these trips ac-
cording to their primary purpose. Thirdly, the trip investigated here
is not a round-trip. We just surveyed the trip from home as the
origin and to a location as the destination.
In future work, we think there may be some potential and
possible research directions. First, survey and measure the round-
trip, in which it has multiple origins and destinations. If possible,
it had better cover multiple-days or even multiple-weeks travel
information, including workdays and weekends or even different
seasons, for a sample, though it would be a huge survey work and
cost pretty much. Secondly, examine the interaction between
different types of trips, which is still seldom studied in existing
research. Thirdly, consider more factors other than socio-
demographics and built environments, such as travel-related atti-
tudes and preferences, the comfort of transport options, and travel
happiness. These may enrich research in the field of travel and
carbon emissions and probably draw divergent conclusions that
lead to better and comprehensive policies.
CRediT authorship contribution statement
Wenyue Yang: Conceptualization, Methodology, Software,
Validation, Formal analysis, Investigation, Resources, Data curation,
Writing - original draft, Visualization, Project administration,
Funding acquisition. Suhong Zhou: Validation, Writing - review &
editing, Supervision, Project administration, Funding acquisition.
Declaration of competing interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing
financial interests or personal relationships that could have
appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the National Natural Science
Foundation of China (41701169; 41871148), the Philosophy and
Social Sciences Planning Project of Guangdong Province
(GD17YSH01), and the 13th Five-Year Plan of Guangzhou Philoso-
phy and Social Science Development (2019GZGJ49). The authors
are grateful for the receipt of these funds.
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