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Abstract

Transportation and mobility patterns contribute to greenhouse gas emissions. Understanding the drivers of these emissions, particularly for high emitters, is key to designing appropriate climate and mobility policies. In this article, we study the distribution of emissions from mobility in Germany and their drivers. We use a 2017 nation-wide mobility survey to calculate the carbon footprint of individuals associated with day-to-day and long-distance travels. We use quantile regression to investigate both socio-economic and attitudinal drivers of emissions across different categories of emitters, and for different mobility types. We discuss our results with respect to previous findings in the literature. Overall, we find that the top 10% of emitters are responsible for 51% of total emissions, and for 80% of emissions from long-distance travel. The statistical analysis reveals strong differences regarding the contribution of socio-economic drivers such as income or location at different levels of emissions. Attitudes towards different transportation modes also strongly correlate with differences in mobility behaviors.