Based on data from 6 389 residents, 8 858 one-day travel diaries, and 10 302 trip activity records in four high-altitude cities—Maerkang, Xining, Shigatse, and Lhasa—we developed a two-level analytical framework distinguishing overall associations from purpose-specific associations. Mixed-effects regression and marginal-effects analysis were employed to examine the overall association between active travel and individual daily travel-related CO₂ emissions and to compare these associations across different travel purposes. The results show that: (1) after controlling for individual socioeconomic characteristics and transport-resource variables, residents who primarily use bicycles as their mode of transportation had a conditional geometric mean of daily travel-related CO₂ emissions approximately 75% lower than that of residents who primarily travelled by car; (2) compared with non-cyclists, occasional cyclists had approximately 44.5% higher conditional geometric mean daily CO₂ emissions, whereas frequent cyclists had approximately 78.5% lower emissions; (3) the associations between active travel and CO₂ emissions vary by travel indicator and purpose: frequent cycling and cycling on the survey day are negatively associated with emissions across all four purposes, whereas the association with cycling trip frequency differs by purpose.
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