Supporting carbon taxes: The role of fairness

Stephan Sommer, Linus Mattauch and Michael Pahle

No 873, Ruhr Economic Papers from RWI - Leibniz-Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung, Ruhr-University Bochum, TU Dortmund University, University of Duisburg-Essen

Abstract: We conduct a discrete choice experiment with a sample of 6,000 German household heads to examine how fairness preferences influence the support for carbon taxes and revenue-recycling options. While it is well-known that carbon taxes are effective in reducing emissions and can be made progressive, they remain fairly unpopular with German citizens. Consequently, best practice to build public support for them remains a relevant question for which there is no consensus. We obtain two major results: First, while green spending is more popular in general, it is significantly more popular among those who are pro-environment and trust the government. Second, when restricted to options for direct revenue redistribution, Germans prefer lump-sum payments over directing payments to the poorest or the most affected. Importantly, choices over these options depend both on genuinely different conceptions of fairness and respondents' economic circumstances. Our findings have implications for building support for effective climate change mitigation policies with those who are not yet convinced.

Keywords: carbon pricing; climate change mitigation; fairness; redistribution; environmental tax reform (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A13 H23 Q54 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ene, nep-env and nep-pol
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (12)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/227106/1/1742246265.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Supporting carbon taxes: The role of fairness (2022)
Working Paper: Supporting carbon taxes: The role of fairness (2020)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:rwirep:873

DOI: 10.4419/96973010

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Ruhr Economic Papers from RWI - Leibniz-Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung, Ruhr-University Bochum, TU Dortmund University, University of Duisburg-Essen Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics ().