Limited impacts of carbon tax rebate programmes on public support for carbon pricing

Mildenberger, Matto; Lachapelle, Érick; Harrison, Kathryn; Stadelmann‐Steffen, Isabelle

doi:10.1038/s41558-021-01268-3

Cited by 112 publications

(70 citation statements)

References 44 publications

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“…However, some recent studies suggest that popular support depends strongly on the political context. One experimental study finds that providing respondents with information about their actual rebates in Canada and Switzerland does not significantly increase support for existing carbon taxes in those countries [36]. This study fills that gap in the experimental literature by examining how rebates shape public support in both abstract as well as politicized contexts.…”

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confidence: 85%

The role of rebates in public support for carbon taxes

Fremstad

Mildenberger

Paul

et al. 2022

Environ. Res. Lett.

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Economists advocate carbon pricing as the primary tool to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. However, very few governments have adopted a carbon tax high enough to meet international emission targets. Political challenges may stem from a number of areas, including political mobilization by policy opponents, consumers’ willingness to pay and the regressivity of many carbon pricing schemes, which might be addressed through rebates. We use a novel carbon tax calculator to provide residents in the US and Switzerland with personalized estimates of the financial costs and benefits associated with carbon pricing policies. Our results indicate that, absent political messaging, rebates increase public support for carbon taxes in both countries by building support among lower income groups. In the US, we find majority support in our sample for both low ($50/tCO2) and high ($230/tCO2) carbon taxes when rebates are included; in Switzerland public support is lower. However, policy is always politicized, and when respondents are exposed to political messages about carbon pricing the effects associated with rebates are dampened or eliminated.

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confidence: 85%

The role of rebates in public support for carbon taxes

Fremstad

Mildenberger

Paul

et al. 2022

Environ. Res. Lett.

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“…At the EU level, high energy and emission allowance prices have sparked heated debates over both price management in the ETS (Khan, 2021;Morawiecki, 2022) as well as the Fit-for-55 package more generally (van Gaal, 2021). There is an emerging debate on whether redistributing the revenues raised by carbon pricing increases support for this instrument (Mildenberger et al, 2022;Sommer et al, 2022).…”

Section: Salience Of Burdens and Conflictsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Related evidence backs the hypothesis that ideology matters in policy-formulation processes. First, specific forms of energy production tend to have a clear "political home," as do specific climate policy instruments (Kulin et al, 2021;Mildenberger et al, 2022;Ziegler, 2017). In the climate-cum-energy realm, three ideologically different transition strategies have been identified: state-centred, market-centred, and grassroots-centred (Thonig et al, 2020).…”

Section: Clash Of Ideologiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Closing the Implementation Gap: Obstacles in Reaching Net-Zero Pledges in the EU and Germany

Perino¹,

Jarke-Neuert

Schenuit

et al. 2022

PaG

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The European Union and Germany have recently committed themselves to greenhouse-gas neutrality by 2050 and 2045, respectively. This substantially reduces their gaps in ambition to the Paris climate goals. However, the current climate policy mix is not sufficient to reach these targets: There is a major implementation gap. Based on economic, legal, and political science perspectives, this article identifies key obstacles in legislating stringent climate policy instruments and making them effective. Using a simple framework, we map the stage of the process in which the obstacles are at work. Moreover, we discuss the potential effectiveness of a select list of prominent drivers of climate-related regulation in overcoming said obstacles and conclude by pointing towards conditions for closing the implementation gap. In doing so, we focus on the current legislative processes of the “Fit-for-55” package by the European Commission and the 2021 Federal Climate Change Act in Germany. Our analysis builds on the extant literature, and we suggest avenues for further research.

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“…3) We examine whether and how attitudes to subsidy removal and carbon taxation may differ from each other. 4) We compare attitudes to removal of subsidies on private consumption of fossil fuels and fossil fuels for industrial use, and nally, 5) we study whether policies that reallocate money spent on fossil fuel subsidies to investments that increase social and economic welfare system, lead to more positive attitudes to subsidy removal (see 12,15,16 ). At the outset, we report that optimal use of savings from subsidy removal has positive effects on public attitudes.…”

Section: Full Textmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…21,22 ), and that public acceptance of removing fossil fuel subsidies for private consumption is lower than the public acceptance of removing fossil fuel subsidies for industrial use. Moreover, a growing body of research concludes that negative attitudes to price-based climate policy tools can be alleviated through policy design, in particular revenue recycling where a price increase is combined with a speci ed use of the available public funds ( 12,16 , but see 15 ). Even though research is somewhat inconclusive concerning the attitudinal effects of different forms of revenue recycling (e.g., fee-and-dividend solutions, increased investments in welfare systems (e.g.…”

Section: Full Textmentioning

confidence: 99%

Attitudes to fossil fuel subsidy removal: A cross-country analysis on four continents

Harring

Jagers

Matti

et al. 2022

Preprint

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The world annually spends $423 billion on subsidizing fossil fuels. Removing fossil fuel subsidies is crucial not only for reducing CO2 emissions and making carbon pricing policies more effective, but also for making more valuable use of government funds. Currently, however, scientific evidence on the scale and scope of public attitudes to fossil fuel subsidy removal policies is lacking, although it is crucial for gauging political feasibility. Furthermore, previous studies focus on carbon pricing in the developed world. Our novel contributions to the literature are, first, a comparative analysis of attitudes to both carbon taxation and fossil-fuel subsidy removal, and second, a focus on five developing countries across four continents. It is found that a) removing fossil fuel subsidies is not more undesirable than introducing carbon taxation and b) the public has more positive attitudes to subsidy removal if optimal use of the surplus fiscal revenues is specified.

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Limited impacts of carbon tax rebate programmes on public support for carbon pricing

Cited by 112 publications

References 44 publications

The role of rebates in public support for carbon taxes

The role of rebates in public support for carbon taxes

Closing the Implementation Gap: Obstacles in Reaching Net-Zero Pledges in the EU and Germany

Attitudes to fossil fuel subsidy removal: A cross-country analysis on four continents

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