The Effect of Reciprocity on Support for Enacting More Stringent Carbon Taxes

• In Event: Public Opinion and Climate Change Policy

Abstract

Countries around the world are experimenting with a wide range of policy measures aimed at reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Pricing carbon, whether through carbon taxes or cap-and-trade systems, is widely regarded as one of the most effective means of reducing fossil fuel consumption (World Bank 2019). However implementing such policies faces many political hurdles, leading to significant variation across countries both in terms of taxation rates and coverage, which results in very strong differences in de facto average carbon prices. Our study furthers research on public support for carbon tax, by being the first to explicitly study the role of international reciprocity. While previous studies on reciprocity in climate policy have generally found small to no effects (Tingley and Tomz 2014; Bernauer and Gampfer 2015; Bernauer et al. 2016; Beiser-McGrath and Bernauer 2019a), we expect that reciprocity should play a greater role in carbon taxation, given its clear direct costs to individuals and less immediate benefits. Furthermore, while most studies on international cooperation assume reciprocity in binary terms, whether another country participates or not, we also how the level of action by other countries, in terms of the price on carbon, affects public support. In order to assess the above argument, we conducted a survey-embedded experiment in Japan (N=2,280). Since 2012 Japan has had a carbon tax. The low level of carbon tax in Japan enables us to realistically ask how Japanese citizens change their preferences on carbon tax when provided information about whether other countries have a carbon tax, as well as whether its higher or lower carbon taxes than Japan. Preliminary results find that individuals are more responsive to whether other countries have higher or lower carbon taxes rather than whether they have carbon taxes or not. Particularly, carbon tax levels in other countries do influence public support for carbon tax level and the response to inaction in the future, but not on the revenue usage or the exemptions for domestic exporting firms.

Authors

• Liam F. Beiser-McGrath, Royal Holloway, University of London

• Thomas Bernauer, ETH Zurich