Biased perceptions of other people's attitudes to carbon taxation
Drews, Stefan (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Institut de Ciència i Tecnologia Ambientals)
Savin, Ivan (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Institut de Ciència i Tecnologia Ambientals)
van den Bergh, Jeroen C. J. M. (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Institut de Ciència i Tecnologia Ambientals)

Date:	2022
Abstract:	Beliefs about other people's opinions on climate change influence one's own opinion. Such beliefs can, however, suffer from biases in perception. Using two nationally representative surveys, we examine this issue in a new context, namely of carbon-tax acceptance in Spain. We find that the more one expects the tax to be accepted by others, the more one accepts it personally. But opponents of a carbon tax tend to strongly overestimate the prevalence of their opinion, i. e. they exhibit a so-called false consensus effect. In contrast, despite holding the majority view, tax supporters somewhat underestimate the prevalence of their own view, which is known as pluralistic ignorance. We further test the role of information provision by providing participants with different percentages of people accepting the tax. Overall, we find little evidence that such information provision significantly increases tax acceptance. The impact of information provision on tax acceptance tends to be moderated by the degree of false consensus.
Grants:	European Commission 741087
Note:	Altres ajuts: Funded by a María de Maeztu Program for Units of Excellence awarded to ICTA-UAB by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation
Note:	Altres ajuts: acords transformatius de la UAB
Note:	Unidad de excelencia María de Maeztu CEX2019-000940-M
Rights:	Aquest document està subjecte a una llicència d'ús Creative Commons. Es permet la reproducció total o parcial, la distribució, la comunicació pública de l'obra i la creació d'obres derivades, sempre que no sigui amb finalitats comercials, i sempre que es reconegui l'autoria de l'obra original.
Language:	Anglès
Document:	Article ; recerca ; Versió publicada
Subject:	Carbon pricing ; False consensus ; Pluralistic ignorance ; Policy support ; Second-order beliefs
Published in:	Energy policy, Vol. 167 (August 2022) , art. 113051, ISSN 0301-4215

DOI: 10.1016/j.enpol.2022.113051

10 p, 3.0 MB

The record appears in these collections:
Research literature > UAB research groups literature > Research Centres and Groups (research output) > Experimental sciences > Institut de Ciència i Tecnologia Ambientals (ICTA) > Environmental and Climate Economics (ECE)
Articles > Research articles
Articles > Published articles