Localizing carbon neutrality policy for climate crisis management: typological analysis of government and citizen roles in Gyeonggi Province

Local governments are central to carbon neutrality implementation because climate risks and policy effects are place-specific. Yet local climate governance cannot be understood through government action alone, nor through mitigation-focused approaches that understate adaptation and everyday civic practices. This study develops and tests a two-dimensional typological framework that integrates (1) policy actors (citizens/civil society, public–private partnerships, government) and (2) policy orientation (mitigation vs. adaptation) to explain how local carbon neutrality policies are configured in practice.Using project-level information from Korea's Carbon Neutrality Policy Portal, we compiled a 2023 dataset of 1589 carbon neutrality projects and constructed four municipal indicators for 31 basic local governments in Gyeonggi Province: the number of citizen-led programs, government-led programs, adaptation projects, and mitigation projects. The results identify two theoretically anticipated types and one empirically emergent type. The citizen-led integrated climate action type shows comparatively strong citizen-centered programming with moderate mitigation and adaptation activity. The government-led mitigation type exhibits high governmental program intensity and strong mitigation performance, with local governments also leading adaptation in practice. A capacity-deficient type emerges with consistently low values across all indicators, suggesting structural constraints in planning and implementation capacity. Notably, the theorized public–private governance type is largely absent, implying either limited collaborative governance or measurement limitations.The findings highlight marked inter-municipal variation and a mitigation bias relative to adaptation, underscoring the need for type-specific strategies and metropolitan-level capacity support.