Salience of carbon taxes in the gasoline market

Equity and The Willingness to Pay for Green Electricity: Evidence from Germany

“…For instance, Rivers and Schaufele (2015) suggest that the introduction of a carbon tax in British Columbia was only publicly accepted because the government reduced the tax rate for low-income households and companies. Apparently, as the acceptance of policies crucially hinges on the distribution of the associated costs, conceiving appropriate payment rules is key for the public acceptance of any policy instrument, not least greenhouse gas abatement measures.…”

“…Most striking is the size of the effects: abolishing the exemption in contributing to this impure public good almost doubles the acceptance rate for a given burden, a larger effect than when quartering this burden. Our empirical finding that reducing inequity in the distribution of cost increases the acceptance of bearing these costs may have high external validity, that is, it may have far-reaching implications for policy-making in other fields where exemptions exist as well, for instance in carbon tax schemes (Bjørner and Jensen, 2002;Martin et al, 2014;Rivers and Schaufele, 2015;Yamazaki, 2017).…”

A template for the world: British Columbia’s carbon tax shift

“…Nicholas Rivers and Brandon Schaufele at the University of Ottawa recently conducted detailed econometric analyses in examining this hypothesis, and noted that, 'the BC carbon tax generated demand response that is 4.9 times larger than is attributable to an equivalent change in the carbon tax-exclusive price'. 17 This differential behavioural response is judged by these authors to be causal and is attributed to the high visibility of the tax, the 'relief of guilt' associated with paying an 'environmental tax', and possibly to resentment of free-ridership, wherein since every fuel consumer pays the carbon tax, environmental responsibility practiced by one, for example by driving less, cannot be subverted by another who cares less and drives more when congestion eases. Of these options, the high visibility of the tax is assumed here to have been of critical importance.…”

Carbon tax and revenue recycling: Impacts on households in British Columbia

“…Empirical studies to date focus on questions related to the political process related to the passing of the regulation (Harrison, 2012) or the policy's environmental effectiveness (Elgie, 2012;Rivers and Schaufele, 2012;British Columbia, 2012b) and its economic effects (Rivers and Schaufele, 2014). These studies suggest that the tax has had a modest impact on the level of greenhouse gas emissions in the province, and do not report negative economic impacts.…”