Public views on carbon taxation and its fairness: a computational-linguistics analysis

• DOI: 10.1007/s10584-020-02842-y
• Publication Date: 2020-08-31T12:03:04Z
• Authors: Ivan Savin; Stefan Drews; Sara Maestre-Andrés; Jeroen van den Bergh
• Keywords: PUBLIC ACCEPTABILITIES; POLICY ACCEPTABILITY; LOW CARBON TRANSPORT; SOCIO-DEMOGRAPHIC CHARACTERISTICS; LANGUAGE; FAIRNESS PERCEPTION; 01 natural sciences; Structural topic modelling; CARBON; CARBON PRICING; ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY; REGRESSION ANALYSIS; RENEWABLE ENERGIES; Policy acceptability; 11. Sustainability; SDG 13 - Climate Action; Structural topic modeling; TOPIC MODELING; TAXATION; ENVIRONMENTAL PROBLEMS; Public opinion; 0105 earth and related environmental sciences; POLITICAL DISCOURSE; POLICY SUPPORT; ECONOMIC ANALYSIS; PERCEPTION; CARBON TAXATION; ALTERNATIVE ENERGY; SPAIN; 1. No poverty; POLLUTION TAX; Fairness perception; 13. Climate action; Carbon pricing; EMISSION CONTROL; PUBLIC OPINION; STRUCTURAL TOPIC MODELING; ENVIRONMENTAL ECONOMICS

Unidad de excelencia María de Maeztu CEX2019-000940-M Carbon taxes evoke a variety of public responses, often with negative implications for policy support, implementation and stringency. Here we use topic modelling to analyze associations of Spanish citizens with a policy proposal to introduce a carbon tax. This involves asking two key questions, to elicit (1) citizens' associations with a carbon tax and (2) their judgment of the fairness of such a policy for distinct uses of tax revenues. We identify 11 topics for the first question and 18 topics for the second. We perform regression analysis to assess how respondents' associations relate to their carbon-tax acceptability, knowledge and socio-demographic characteristics. The results show that, compared to people accepting the carbon tax, those rejecting it show less trust in politicians, think that the rich should pay more than the poor, consider the tax to be less fair, and stress more a lack of renewable energy or low-carbon transport. Respondents accepting a carbon tax emphasize more the need to solve environmental problems and care about a just society. These insights can help policy makers to improve the design and communication of climate policy with the aim to increase its public acceptability.