How to increase public support for carbon pricing with revenue recycling
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 13110457 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Andrej Woerner (0000-0003-1583-4131, Ifo Institute for Economic Research, corresponding author), Taisuke Imai (0000-0002-0610-8093, Ifo Institute for Economic Research), Davide D Pace (0000-0002-5201-5293, Ifo Institute for Economic Research), Kari M Schmidt (0000-0002-5011-0828, Ifo Institute for Economic Research) |
| Year | 2024 |
| Volume | 7 |
| Issue | 12 |
| Pages | 1633-1641 |
| Publication date | 2024-11-21 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Nature Sustainability (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 2398-9629 • E-ISSN: 2398-9629 |
| Publisher | Nature Portfolio (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1038/s41893-024-01466-9 |
| OpenAlex | W4404595321 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 5 |
| References cited | 39 |
Carbon pricing is a powerful but politically contentious tool for tackling climate change. Governments can, however, try to increase public support for it by adjusting how the revenues raised by the carbon price are used. In a fully incentivized experiment with a large representative sample of the German population, we compare voter support for five different carbon pricing schemes. We show that uniform carbon dividends (equal per capita transfers to all citizens) receive substantially more support than a carbon dividend that favours poorer people, than earmarking revenues for climate projects and especially than using revenues for the general government budget. Among the uniform carbon dividend schemes, a climate premium that pays a fixed upfront transfer equal to the expected carbon revenues receives more support than a carbon dividend scheme where the size of the transfer is determined ex post based on the actual revenues. Furthermore, we show that participants and experts underestimate public support for carbon pricing. These findings suggest that policies for sustainable development gain more support when affected voters are uniformly compensated for the costs imposed on them. In addition, the paper highlights the importance of incentivized experiments in studying public support for such policies
Business · Carbon fibers · Carbon Footprint · Carbon price · Carbon tax · Dividend · Economics · Greenhouse gas · Monetary economics · Natural resource economics · Per capita · Population · Public economics · Public support · Revenue · Climate Change Policy and Economics · Economic and Environmental Valuation · Energy, Environment, Economic Growth · Ecology · Finance
Public opinion about climate policies
Perceived fairness and public acceptability of carbon pricing
Do you not like Pigou, or do you not understand him? Tax aversion and revenue recycling in the lab
Could revenue recycling make effective carbon taxation politically feasible?
Green Taxes in a Post-Paris World
Limited impacts of carbon tax rebate programmes on public support for carbon pricing
Globally representative evidence on the actual and perceived support for climate action
Salience and Taxation
How Accurate Are Surveyed Preferences for Public Policies? Evidence from a Unique Institutional Setup
International Attitudes Toward Global Policies
Overcoming public resistance to carbon taxes
Public willingness to pay for a US carbon tax and preferences for spending the revenue
The acceptability of efficiency-enhancing environmental taxes, subsidies and regulation
Why are carbon taxes unfair? Disentangling public perceptions of fairness
Uncertainty about carbon impact and the willingness to avoid CO 2 emissions
French attitudes on climate change, carbon taxation and other climate policies
Self-serving bias in redistribution choices
Environmental taxation for good and for bad
| Unique citing works | 5 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 5 |
| Citation span | 2025 - 2026 (2) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 5 |