While carbon pricing is widely seen as a crucial element of climate policy and has been implemented in many countries, it also has met with strong resistance. We provide a comprehensive perspective on public perceptions of fairness of carbon pricing and how these affect policy acceptability. To this end, we review evidence from relevant empirical studies on how individuals judge personal, distributional and procedural aspects of carbon taxes and capand-trade. In addition, we examine their preferences for distinct redistributive and other uses of revenues generated by carbon pricing and their role in instrument acceptability. Our results indicate a high concern for distributional effects, particularly in relation to policy impacts on poor people, in turn reducing policy acceptability. In addition, people show little trust in the capacities of governments to put the revenues of carbon pricing to good uses. Somewhat surprisingly, most studies do not arrive at clear public preferences for using revenues to assure fairer policy outcomes, notably by reducing its regressive effects. Instead, many people prefer using revenues for 'environmental projects' of various kinds. We end by providing recommendations for improving public acceptability of carbon pricing. One suggestion to increase policy acceptability is combining the redistribution of revenue to vulnerable groups with the funding for environmental projects such as on renewable energy.

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