Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

Urbanization and motorization have been the main themes in many developing countries in the past decade. While bolstering economic development, they have also contributed to issues such as congestion and local air pollution. China, as one of the most prominent examples, experienced a series of social, economic, and environmental transformations during urbanization. It is crucial for China's future sustainable development to understand the evolution in urban residents' environmental awareness and consumption pattern, and how they jointly impact car ownership and usage decisions. However, due to data limitations, few studies have systematically investigated this issue. To fill this research gap, we use Chinese General Social Survey in 2003 and 2013 to capture the temporal evolution of consumption patterns and environmental awareness by confirmatory factorial analysis. We then make latent class analysis to conceptualize these two factors as forming distinct typologies and to categorize survey respondents into different categories. After controlling for social-economic and demographical characteristics, we finally examine determinants of people's car ownership and use during this fast-changing decade through Multiple Group Structural Equation Modeling. We expect that accompanied by the rapid economic growth, urban Chinese on average had shifted their lifestyle more towards a high-end consumption pattern and environmental awareness played an increasingly important role in car ownership and usage decisions from 2003 to 2013. Our study will provide new understanding of the motorization process in China and help policy-makers design more effective policies to reduce energy consumption and mitigate environmental pollution for a pathway towards a low-carbon future.