From Ghost Kitchens to Carbon Taxes: Tracing the Butterfly Effect of Urban Food Delivery Safety Concerns through Machine Learning

The pandemic-related working from home have further expanded the demand for delivery food APPs, forging instant highway connecting global urban kitchens to consumers' palates. However, the voices of residents questioning the urban ghost kitchens (Takeout-exclusive commercial kitchens lacking on-site dining options) triggered urban food safety concern(UFSC) have been overlooked by researchers. Studies about food delivery(FD) mostly focused on heat exposure, carbon emissions and traffic. Little attention has been paid to the effects of this urban shadows on climate policy. To address this gap, this study focused on the urban public acceptability of carbon tax, for the first time revealing the unexpectedly impact of UFSC on willingness to pay carbon tax (WPT). The findings based on 162,036 interviewees indicate: (1) The ghost kitchen crisis counterintuitively speed up climate policy acceptance. UFSC boosts consumers' willingness to WPT. The more anxious the public is, the more residents want to pay carbon taxes to improve urban environments; (2) UFSC amplifies the impact of environmental strategy knowledge (ESK) on WPT via a dual-channel effect and actively moderates the relationship between environmental protection purchase decisions (EPPD) and WPT, unveiling a nuanced behavioral spillover mechanism comprising behavioral priming (EPPD-UFSC) and cognitive amplification (UFSC-WPT); (3) Inequalities shape the heterogeneity of policy acceptance. For residents with high levels of concern about ghost kitchens, class identity is the primary driver of their high WPT, with carbon tax seen as a "premium for sustainability halo" because of their relatively strong economic capacity. While for those with moderate to low levels, a large number of family members is the main driver behind their high WPT (for big family’ health burden). These findings are crucial for fostering widespread acceptance and support for climate policies and urban equality.