Understanding the resistance to carbon taxes: Drivers and barriers among the general public and fuel-tax protesters
Journal article, 2022

Carbon taxes are generally well accepted in countries with significant experience thereof but there is still public resistance to raising them. We study attitudes toward carbon taxation and other environmental policy instruments in Sweden. We survey a national sample of the population as well as members of a large political movement that protests fuel taxes. Our results show that the motivations in both groups are alike: educational level, rural versus urban domicile, political orientation, and especially trust in government correlate with opinions on carbon taxes; household income does not appear to matter. Lack of trust in government and lack of belief in the Pigouvian mechanism appear as especially important motivations for protesters' opposition. We find support for revenue refunding, but greater support, in both groups, for earmarking for climate use. (c) 2022 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

Protest

Carbon tax

Fairness

Political acceptability

Climate change

Author

Jens Ewald

University of Gothenburg

Thomas Sterner

University of Gothenburg

Erik Sterner

University of Gothenburg

Chalmers, Communication and Learning in Science, Engineering Education Research - EER (Chalmers)

Resources and Energy Economics

0928-7655 (ISSN)

Vol. 70 101331

Subject Categories

Political Science (excluding Public Administration Studies and Globalization Studies)

International Migration and Ethnic Relations

Human Geography

DOI

10.1016/j.reseneeco.2022.101331

More information

Latest update

10/21/2022