Public preferences for carbon tax attributes

Abstract

The impacts of climate change are already visible throughout the world. Recognizing the threats posed by climate change, the Durban Platform, the 17th Session of the Conference of Parties (COP 17), underscores that the global nature of climate change calls for the widest possible cooperation and ambitious action by all countries. A crucial starting point for the design of effective and publicly acceptable policies is to explore public preferences for climate policy instruments. Using a choice experiment, this study investigates public preferences for carbon tax attributes in a developing country context. The results account for heterogeneity in preferences and show that Turkish people prefer a carbon tax with a progressive cost distribution rather than one with a regressive cost distribution. The private cost has a negative effect on the probability of choosing the tax. Earmarking carbon tax revenues increases the public acceptability of the tax. Moreover, there is a preference for a carbon tax that promotes public awareness of climate change.

Green Taxes in a Post-Paris World: Are Millions of Nays Inevitable?

“…As expected, a higher tax rate is linked to a lower acceptability, everything else equal. This is a standard public choice result, in line with Kallbekken (2011), Brannlund andPersson (2012) and Gevrek and Uyduranoglu (2015). However, the difference in acceptance between 0 and 60 francs is relatively small in comparison with the other tax rates.…”

“…The unpopularity of carbon taxes has hampered their implementation in France (Deroubaix and Lévèque 2006), while fear of competitiveness effects led to massive exemptions in Scandinavian countries, decreasing the potential for any sizeable environmental effect (Baranzini and Carattini 2014). Similar obstacles seem to reduce the popularity of carbon taxes in emerging economies, too (Gevrek and Uyduranoglu 2015). Recent voting in the United States (Washington State) provides further support to the idea of a widespread resistance to carbon taxes.…”

“…Progressive designs are also preferred to regressive ones. Gevrek and Uyduranoglu (2015) extend the analysis of the acceptability of carbon taxes to emerging economies with a choice experiment in Turkey. While their setting does not allow measuring the overall level of acceptability of hypothetical Turkish carbon taxes, their empirical exercise provides very similar findings to the literature in developed countries, including the preference for progressive schemes, for earmarking of revenues and for low tax rates.…”

“…Similarly to e.g. Gevrek and Uyduranoglu (2015), we apply a latent-class model to explain heterogeneous preferences. According to our data, 5 latent classes can be identified.…”

The use of graphite foams for simultaneous collection and storage of concentrated solar energy

“…Consequently there has been an increasing, world-wide focus on utilizing renewable energy options [3,4]. In this context carbon is usually viewed in a negative light with most industries and nations trying to reduce their "carbon footprint" [5,6]. For these reasons increasing research focus has been placed on developing carbon materials for novel renewable applications [7,8].…”