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Assessing the Impact of Land Use and Travel on Carbon Dioxide Emissions in Portland, Oregon

The negative consequences of sprawling metropolitan regions have attracted attention in both academia and in practice regarding how to better design settlements and alter travel behavior in a quest to curtail vehicle emissions. Studies that have attempted to understand the nexus between land use, travel and vehicle emissions have not been able to address the issue of self-selection in a satisfactory manner. Self-selection occurs when households choose their residential location based, in part, on expected travel behavior. This non-random experience makes the use of traditional regression frameworks that strongly rely on random sampling, unsuitable. This replication study's purpose was to examine the impact of land use and travel on CO2 emissions using the Heckman (1979) sample selection model in Portland Metropolitan Area. three research questions guided this study: (1) Does self-selection to drive a motor vehicle lead to reduction in CO2 emissions? (2) Does land use and automobile travel influence the decision to drive after controlling for self-selection? (3) What land use and travel factors determine CO2 emissions after controlling for self-selection? The findings suggest driving has a statistically significant negative effect on estimated CO2 and that most land use variables significantly affect driving behavior.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:pdx.edu/oai:pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu:open_access_etds-5073
Date17 November 2017
CreatorsMumuni, Zakari
PublisherPDXScholar
Source SetsPortland State University
Detected LanguageEnglish
Typetext
Formatapplication/pdf
SourceDissertations and Theses

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