Analysis on Acceptance of Carbon Credit System as an Incentive for Choosing Green Travel Modes with Structural Equation Modeling

Attracting more people from private cars to green travel modes, such as walking, cycling, metro and bus, is an effective and important way of constructing low-carbon transportation system. Carbon credit system, functioning as an incentive to make this attraction a success, is an innovative system of exchanging carbon among individual persons. This system originates from the carbon trading system among different countries. This paper analyzes people's acceptance of carbon credit system as well as its influencing factors with data collected from an online questionnaire. Six aspects of information including personal socio-economic attributes, usage of carbon credit platform, awareness of concepts related to carbon credit system, attitude towards carbon credit system, travel mode and acceptance of carbon credit incentive for green travel, were collected through the survey. A structural equation model (SEM) is used to analyze the relationship between the experience of using the carbon credit platform, the cognition of the concepts related to the carbon credit system, the attitude toward the carbon credit system and the use of the carbon credit platform to obtain carbon credits. The results show that the experience of using the carbon credit platform, the awareness of the concepts related to the carbon credit system, and the attitude toward the carbon credit system have direct positive effects on the willingness to use the carbon credit platform. Finally, strategies from policy aspects, transportation infrastructure service facilities, education aspects, and carbon credit platform improvement and publicity aspects are recommended to attract more individuals to green travel modes.