Investigation of carbon footprint awareness using travel diary method

Abstract

In this study,100 university students were recruited to complete a seven day travel diary that described their use of privately owned motor vehicles in order to discover their underlying psychological factors that affected the production of individual carbon footprints through travel patterns. The diaries were collected and the respondents were given a motivation session related to carbon emissiona caused by motor vehicles. They were then asked to record their travel patterns for a further seven days and encouraged to change their travel patterns to be more pro-environment. A statistical analysis was performed to examine the differences of these individual's carbon footprints; before and after the motivation session. The results revealed significant differences in carbon footprints between first and second travel diaries. The structural equation modeling demonstrated that among the psychological variables, pro-environment attitude was the most significant factor affecting the respondent's intention to reduce their usage of motor vehicles; thus influencing the respondents' behavior to be more pro-environmentalist. As a conclusion, this study suggests that individual carbon footprint can be measured through travel diary method.