Key Laboratory of Behavioral Science, Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100101, China; Department of Psychology, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, China.
School of Business, Beijing Technology and Business University, Beijing, 100048, China.
J Environ Manage. 2024 Feb 14;352:120025. doi: 10.1016/j.jenvman.2024.120025. Epub 2024 Jan 13.
A carbon tax is effective at curbing carbon emissions, but it is met with low public support due to its high personal cost. Investigations have been conducted to reform carbon tax design to ease the burden on individuals by providing economic compensation, but the cost for governments is high. We propose a new cost-efficient solution by introducing people to a pre-existing reward-based climate policy to create a sense of economic compensation. Across three experiments, we show that the presence of a pre-existing reward-based climate policy increases participants' support for a carbon tax, especially when the innate connection between the two policies is made salient and people regard the reward as compensation for the tax. In contrast, if people are distracted from sensing this interrelationship, support for the tax does not differ from when it is introduced alone. Applicability of this approach was tested under different conditions where the pressure to reduce carbon emission is either high or low.
征收碳税能有效控制碳排放，但由于其对个人造成较高成本，公众支持度较低。因此，有研究对碳税设计进行改革，通过提供经济补偿来减轻个人负担，但政府的成本很高。我们提出了一种新的具有成本效益的解决方案，即通过引入预先存在的基于奖励的气候政策，让人们感受到经济补偿，从而创造一种补偿感。通过三个实验，我们发现，预先存在的基于奖励的气候政策的存在增加了参与者对碳税的支持，尤其是当两个政策之间的内在联系变得明显，并且人们将奖励视为对税收的补偿时。相比之下，如果人们没有注意到这种相互关系，那么对税收的支持就不会与单独引入时有所不同。在减排压力较高或较低的不同情况下，该方法的适用性得到了测试。
