Perceived fairness and public acceptability of carbon pricing: a review of the literature

ABSTRACT 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 overview of public perceptions of the fairness of carbon pricing and how these affect policy acceptability. To this end, we review evidence from empirical studies on how individuals judge personal, distributional and procedural aspects of carbon taxes and cap-and-trade. In addition, we examine preferences for particular redistributive and other uses of revenues generated by carbon pricing and their role in instrument acceptability. Our results indicate a high concern over distributional effects, particularly in…

• EC
  European Commission

  Award: 741087
• ER
  European Research Council
• H2
  Horizon 2020