This article examines how people perceive the fairness of carbon taxes when distributional outcomes are unequal. While fairness perceptions are known to be crucial for public support of carbon taxation, the mechanisms underlying it remain insufficiently understood. Using a factorial survey experiment with 770 Swiss citizens, we study how inequality aversion affects fairness perceptions, distinguishing between aversion to self-centred inequality and aversion to inequality in society. We find that fairness perceptions are strongly driven by the former: individuals who anticipate benefiting from a carbon tax are significantly more likely to perceive it as fair. At the same time, perceived fairness declines when individuals find themselves better off than others, indicating an aversion to relative advantage. Being worse off than others also reduces perceived fairness, although less consistently. Concerns about unequal outcomes in society play a more limited role and are politically conditioned: right-leaning respondents view unequal outcomes as less fair, whereas left-leaning respondents accept inequality when it disadvantages high emitters. Importantly, these patterns are largely independent of the specific policy sector in which the tax is applied. These findings show that fairness perceptions are shaped less by abstract redistribution principles than by relational comparisons and ideological interpretation. Carbon taxes are therefore more likely to be perceived as fair when distributional outcomes minimise salient disparities in net outcomes and can be credibly justified across the political spectrum.
Presented at the Swiss Political Science Association Congress, February 2024, St. Gallen, Switzerland; Presented at the 9th Workshop of Experimental Economics for the Environment, September 2024, Bochum, Germany
Preprint available here: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=6238042
Carbon taxes remain politically contested despite their effectiveness in reducing emissions. A dominant explanation attributes low public support to perceived unfairness, leading policymakers and researchers to emphasise redistributive design features. Yet empirical evidence shows that redistributions often have limited effects on public support. This paper argues that this apparent failure reflects differences in the fairness criteria citizens apply when evaluating two policy components of carbon taxation: the allocation of costs and the redistribution of revenues. Drawing on the triumvirate of tenets of energy justice and a survey experiment conducted in Switzerland, I examine fairness perceptions separately for cost allocation and redistributions. The analysis identifies two recurring fairness orientations: one prioritising effectiveness and another combining effectiveness with inclusiveness, especially promoting mitigating costs for vulnerable groups in society. While these orientations appear in both policy components, their relative prevalence shifts. Inclusive effectiveness dominates when citizens evaluate the cost allocation of carbon taxation, but loses majority status when they assess redistributions. These findings suggest that limited gains in public support do not stem from a rejection of redistribution, but from a misalignment between fairness norms applied to costs and those applied to redistributions. The paper refines existing accounts of how fairness shapes public support and offers implications for the design and communication of carbon tax policies.
Carbon taxes are effective instruments for reducing greenhouse gas emissions; however, public acceptance remains a significant obstacle. Redistributing tax revenues back to the population is often proposed as a means of increasing the perceived fairness of distributional outcomes and, by extension, acceptability. However, recent evidence suggests that the effect of redistribution on acceptability is modest. This letter contributes to the literature by arguing that existing carbon tax policies alter how people react to redistributive features. We draw on data from a conjoint experiment with 800 respondents from a representative sample of the Swiss population. Respondents were randomly exposed to evaluating alternative carbon tax policies relative to the existing Swiss carbon tax, a redistribution treatment focusing on societal fairness, or a combination of both. The results show that redistribution does not, on average, increase the acceptability of carbon taxes. Progressive redistributive schemes become more favourable once respondents are informed about the existing carbon tax, particularly among left-leaning citizens, but this effect is conditional on specific carbon tax policies. Moreover, we detect a strong entrenchment effect of preferring the status quo, substantially reducing the acceptability of alternative carbon tax policies. These findings suggest that carbon tax acceptability is shaped less by redistributive features than by how new policy designs are evaluated relative to policy baselines, with important implications for the design and communication of future carbon pricing reforms.
Presented at EPG Online Seminars Autum Term 2025
Carbon taxes are regarded as an important policy for mitigating emissions, yet they lack public acceptance to be implemented effectively. Redistributing tax revenues is said to counter these drawbacks by decreasing the financial burden and improving perceived fairness of distributional outcomes, two of the main reasons for low acceptability. However, recent empirical evidence shows that redistributive schemes fail to deliver on their promise, especially in real-world or highly politicized contexts. Our study contributes to understanding this phenomenon by conducting a series of qualitative focus groups with Swiss participants. We employ a hybrid thematic analysis, combining a theory-driven deductive approach with an inductive reading of participants’ reasoning. Our results show that redistributions primarily do not affect the main reasons for the perceived unfairness, i.e. the inability of vulnerable groups to avoid the carbon tax. In that logic, redistributions are merely a compensatory element of a regressive, environmentally ineffective policy. Crucially, citizens prefer just outcomes, but redistributions are not perceived the right element to achieve this outcome. Although normative justifications of this vary across social cleavages, the main result is remarkably robust. The article suggests a new framing of redistribution that better aligns with the environmental goal of carbon taxation and helps policymakers seeking to implement publicly acceptable and effective carbon tax designs.