Comparison of Driving Forces to Increasing Traffic Flow and Transport Emissions in Philippine Regions: A Spatial Decomposition Study

Geoffrey Udoka Nnadiri, Anthony S. F. Chiu, Jose Bienvenido Manuel Biona and Neil Stephen Lopez
Additional contact information
Geoffrey Udoka Nnadiri: Mechanical Engineering Department, De La Salle University, Manila 0922, Philippines
Anthony S. F. Chiu: Industrial & Systems Engineering Department, De La Salle University, Manila 0922, Philippines
Jose Bienvenido Manuel Biona: Mechanical Engineering Department, De La Salle University, Manila 0922, Philippines
Neil Stephen Lopez: Mechanical Engineering Department, De La Salle University, Manila 0922, Philippines

Sustainability, 2021, vol. 13, issue 11, 1-17

Abstract: The warming of the climate system has raised a lot of concerns for decades, and this is traceable to human activities and energy use. Conspicuously, the transportation sector is a great contributor to global emissions. This is largely due to increasing dependence on private vehicles and a poorly planned public transportation system. In addition to economic impacts, this also has significant environmental and sustainability implications. This study demonstrates a novel approach using spatial logarithmic mean Divisia index (LMDI) to analyze drivers of traffic flow and its corresponding CO 2 emissions in regions through an illustrative case study in the Philippines. Population growth is revealed as the main driver to traffic flow in most regions with the exception of a few regions and the national capital which are driven by economic activity. The economic activity effect shows positive trends contributing positively to traffic flow which is greatly linked to income level rise and increase in vehicle ownership. Concerning the impacts, results revealed that an increase in economic activity generally causes traffic intensity to decrease, and switching to more sustainable modes is not a guarantee to reduce carbon emissions. The authors recommend increasing equity on the appropriation of transport infrastructure projects across regions, quality improvement of public transport services and promoting mixed-use development.

Keywords: transport; spatial LMDI; emissions; Philippines (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/11/6500/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/11/6500/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:13:y:2021:i:11:p:6500-:d:570432

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().