The role of rebates in public support for carbon taxes

Economists advocate carbon pricing as the primary tool to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. However, very few governments have adopted a carbon tax high enough to meet international emission targets. Political challenges may stem from a number of areas, including political mobilization by policy opponents, consumers' willingness to pay and the regressivity of many carbon pricing schemes, which might be addressed through rebates. We use a novel carbon tax calculator to provide residents in the US and Switzerland with personalized estimates of the financial costs and benefits associated with carbon pricing policies. Our results indicate that, absent political messaging, rebates increase public support for carbon taxes in both countries by building support among lower income groups. In the US, we find majority support in our sample for both low ($50/tCO2) and high ($230/tCO2) carbon taxes when rebates are included; in Switzerland public support is lower. However, policy is always politicized, and when respondents are exposed to political messages about carbon pricing the effects associated with rebates are dampened or eliminated

Todesfall eines Kindes im Rahmen eines Influenza-Ausbruchs in einem Kindergarten

Im Epidemiologischen Bulletin 22/2018 wird ein Ausbruchsgeschehen durch Influenza-A(H1N1)pdm09-Virus in einer Kita und deren sozialer Umgebung analysiert. Die Mehrheit der involvierten Personen war nicht gegen Influenza immunisiert. Die Variation der Symptome bei den Erkrankten von leichtem Husten bis hin zu respiratorischem Versagen infolge Pneumonie bei diesem Influenza-Ausbruch mit genetisch, innerhalb des Kerngeschehens, unverändertem Virus zeigt, dass die Influenza auf individueller Ebene unterschiedliche Verläufe nehmen kann, die nicht vorhersagbar sind.Peer Reviewe

Can direct consumer payments boost climate policy support? Experimental evidence from Switzerland

Ecological economists argue strongly in favor of incentive-based approaches to promote the transition of energy systems towards renewables and to reduce energy consumption. However, these instruments have been shown to be particularly difficult to implement politically. In particular, the more visible costs of a tax compared with regulation, emission trading, or subsidies the more pronounced public opposition. This has prompted interest in the potential to mitigate public concerns through recycling of carbon tax revenues, especially the “fee and dividend” model advanced by the US economists’ letter. However, empirical evidence on whether and how citizens actually react to such revenue recycling is to date very limited. This is also due to the fact that only two countries (Canada and Switzerland) currently use cap and dividend policies. Moreover, previous work suggests that publics in both countries have weak knowledge about the benefits they receive from these policies. In this study, we focus on the case of Switzerland, and use two survey experiments to investigate whether increased visibility of the rebates increase citizens’ support for these instruments

Can societal tipping dynamics help to generate majority support for carbon taxing?

Effective climate policies are notoriously difficult to implement politically. In particular, most economists believe that carbon pricing, i.e., direct government policies to increase the cost of releasing carbon pollution into the atmosphere, is the optimal climate policy. However, carbon-pricing proposals have met with fierce political resistance across the world, with public opposition catalyzed by policy opponents. Based on conjoint analyses from two countries, Switzerland and the United States, we investigate whether and how social tipping dynamics related to value change can help these policies to gain majority support. First, we capture tipping towards majority support by analyzing the factors that lead individuals to support carbon tax proposals. We apply the tipping logic by applying a “hard” measure of support, i.e. we only code those respondents as supporting who indicated to support hypothetical conjoint scenarios with a likelihood of 75% or more. Based on this, we can identify proposals that have the potential to receive majority support and thus lead to a tipping towards carbon taxing. Moreover, we investigate the role of societal values and value change at two levels. On the one hand, we rely on our conjoint analysis, where we have several attributes indicating the position of political and societal actors towards the carbon tax proposals. Hence, this helps us to assess whether parties and civil society organizations (and which ones), by supporting according policies, can make citizens tip towards supporting according policies. On the other hand, we analyze the difference between respondents with strong and weak climate change attitudes to gain insights on whether societal change, i.e., the move towards more pronounced climate change concern, can substantially influence the evaluation of carbon taxation policies and therewith their public support

Limited impacts of carbon tax rebate programmes on public support for carbon pricing

Revenue recycling through lump-sum dividends may help mitigate public opposition to carbon taxes, yet evidence from real-world policies is lacking. Here we use survey data from Canada and Switzerland, the only countries with climate rebate programmes, to show low public awareness and substantial underestimation of climate rebate amounts in both countries. Information was obtained using a five-wave panel survey that tracked public attitudes before, during and after implementation of Canada’s 2019 carbon tax and dividend policy and a large-scale survey of Swiss residents. Experimental provision of individualized information about true rebate amounts had modest impacts on public support in Switzerland but potentially deleterious effects on support in Canada, especially among Conservative voters. In both countries, we find that perceptions of climate rebates are structured less by informed assessments of economic interest than by partisan identities. These results suggest limited effects of existing rebate programmes, to date, in reshaping the politics of carbon taxatio

Limited evidence that carbon tax rebates have increased public support for carbon pricing

We find limited evidence that individual or household rebates (also called dividends) have increased public support for carbon taxes in Canada and Switzerland. In the presence of partisan and interest group conflict over climate policy, policymakers should not assume that voter support for carbon pricing will automatically increase with the inclusion of rebates

Aktuelle Rückvergütung hat nur beschränkten Einfluss auf Zustimmung zu CO2-Steuern

Aus wissenschaftlicher Perspektive wäre eine CO2-Steuer das ideale Instrument, um Anreize für einen geringeren CO2-Ausstoss zu setzen. Dennoch ist sie politisch schwer umsetzbar. Doch kann die Zustimmung der Bevölkerung erhöht werden, wenn die Steuereinnahmen an die Bürger:innen rückverteilt werden? Eine Studie hat dies in der Schweiz und in Kanada untersucht, den einzigen Ländern die eine solche Steuer mit Rückverteilung kennen