Provincial responsibility for carbon emissions in China under different principles

By applying a multi-regional input–output model, the study compares the provincial responsibility for carbon emissions and provincial carbon multipliers in China under seven responsibility-allocating principles, including three basic principles, the production, income and consumption principles, and four shared responsibility principles, the income-weighted, consumption weighted, comprehensive, and weighted comprehensive principles. Empirical results indicate that carbon multipliers of provinces under these principles are significantly different from one another. The carbon multipliers of provinces with higher ratios of carbon intensive sectors in their outputs are also larger. At the same time, the carbon multipliers of the same sector in the provinces are significantly different from one another. Changing the principle causes significant changes in the responsibility for carbon emissions of some provinces, but only slight changes in the responsibilities of some other provinces. However, the responsibilities of provinces with large economic sizes (output) are always the largest, whereas provinces with the smallest economic sizes are always the smallest regardless of the principles. Further, this study proposes a series of regional policies for carbon mitigation according to provincial carbon multipliers and responsibility allocation features under the different principles. - Highlights: • We link regional environmental responsibility to seven benefit principles. • We analyze provincial responsibility for carbon emissions in China. • We also report provincial carbon multipliers under different principles. • We compare the seven principles from the regional perspective. • Policy implications of the study are discussed.