Abstract:

[Significance] Since the establishment of the "dual carbon" goals, promoting the low-carbon transformation of lifestyles has become a core issue of green and high-quality development. However, most existing studies selected urban residents as the research subject for investigating low-carbon behaviors, systematic exploration from the perspective of rural residents needs to be supplemented. The implementation of the Digital Rural Development Strategy creates favorable conditions for digital empowerment in the low-carbon transformation of rural residents' lifestyles. Based on the perspective of rural residents' behavior, this paper systematically sorts out relevant literature, aiming to explore the core difficulties of rural residents' lifestyle low-carbon transformation and the feasible paths of digital empowerment, so as to provide theoretical reference and practical guidance for the deepening of research in this field and the optimization of relevant policies. [Progress] Firstly, the mainstream theories and research findings were reviewed on resident behavior, concluding that existing studies mostly focus on urban residents, with insufficient relevance analysis and in-depth discussion in rural contexts. Secondly, the core dilemmas in the low-carbon lifestyle transformation of rural residents were analyzed from the two dimensions of behavior and cognition. At the behavioral level, rural residents have low acceptance of new low-carbon practices; their behavioral decisions are strongly influenced by social relations such as regional and kinship ties, and external strong stimuli are needed to drive behavioral change. At the cognitive level, rural residents have limited exposure to low-carbon knowledge, which hinders the formation of low-carbon awareness. Meanwhile, there is a significant deviation between low-carbon cognition and actual behavior, and more external incentives are required for rural residents to translate awareness into action. The proposal of the Digital Countryside has provided hardware infrastructure and policy support for digitally driving the low-carbon transformation of rural residents' behavior. Accordingly, the common enabling scenarios of digitalization were further sorted out in rural life and explored feasible paths for the low-carbon transformation of rural residents' behavior in the digital era. From one aspect, embedding digital technologies and their derivative products is a measure to reshape residents' living habits. Specifically, digital technologies can optimize residents' daily life experience and improve efficiency, while digital financial products and services can lower the costs of low-carbon practices for rural residents. From another aspect, leveraging digital platforms as communication channels helps gradually cultivate residents' low-carbon awareness. This is reflected in the efficient dissemination of information that expands rural residents' scope of low-carbon knowledge, and digital social interactions that transform their traditional mindsets. Finally, China's current policy system related to guiding residents' low-carbon behavior was reviewed and evaluated. It is characterized by national macro-plans that set the overall development direction, and local policies that focus on strengthening digital infrastructure construction. [Conclusions and Prospects] Digitalization can accurately address the behavioral and cognition difficulties in the low-carbon transformation of rural residents' lifestyles through four paths: technology embedding, financial empowerment, information dissemination, and social guidance. Future research needs to further expand the applicability of low-carbon behavior theories in rural scenarios, verify the carbon reduction effect and heterogeneous impact of digitalization in rural living scenarios, and construct a two-way interactive digital carbon reduction policy system featuring government guidance and resident participation, so as to provide more targeted theoretical support and policy ideas for the coordinated development of rural residents' lifestyle low-carbon transformation and rural revitalization.

Key words: digital technology, low-carbon transition, digital countryside, "dual carbon", digital platform, carbon emissions