Breaking the “income-waiting dilemma” to decrease residential building carbon emissions

Various studies have explored the application of the inverted-U-shaped relationship in various industries. However, these studies have not determined whether building carbon emissions (BCEs) have inflection points and whether these points indicate a possible BCE owing to an increase in residents' income. Using threshold regression techniques, this study observed an distinct inverted-U-shaped relationship with two turning points between BCEs and household income. Furthermore, we found that income increases may result in a lock-in effect of high BCEs. We proposed the “income-waiting dilemma” concept that involves passively waiting for BCEs to decrease owing to an increase in residential income. We further examined the mechanism of the effect of residents' income on BCEs. Subsequently, we discussed channels to break the “income-waiting dilemma” from the perspectives of improvement in energy efficiency and increasing the clean energy power based on scenario analyses. The results show that an improvement in the energy efficiency of buildings and increased use of electric power generated by clean energy may accelerate the BCE peaks occurring approximately 10 years earlier. Finally, we put forward three reasonable and comprehensive suggestions to overcome the predicament and accelerate the inflection point of BCEs as residents’ income increases.