Abstract

Pre-event infrastructure programs for sport mega-events are assessed through construction footprints and sectoral supply chains. Yet these investment cycles also work through residents: by redistributing income, reshaping household consumption practices, and triggering additional embodied emissions that rarely enter sustainability planning. We quantify this resident-centered pathway for the Santiago 2023 PanAmerican Games using an environmentally extended Miyazawa model that endogenizes the income-consumption loop of households and spatializes incidence using municipal residence-based allocation within the Santiago Metropolitan Region. Results show that the induced carbon footprint is dominated by investment-driven supply chains (about 90%), but a non-trivial share arises through income-induced household demand (10%). This household channel is distributionally structured: middle and upper-middle groups account for the largest consumption-linked shares, while higher-income groups concentrate the income-based incidence of the shock. Under a shared-responsibility allocation, responsibility is split almost evenly between production-based (43%) and consumption-based (42.5%) principles, with an additional income-based (14.5%) component, and the resulting burdens are spatially clustered across municipalities rather than evenly distributed. These findings suggest that credible low-carbon megaevent planning requires more than cleaner construction. It should integrate resident-centered measures that reduce the carbon intensity of induced consumption and adopt place-based strategies that address uneven municipal burdens during investment cycles.