Climate politics cannot be successful unless a majority of various groups of people support climate policies. Public resistance and related reluctance among politicians to pursue unpopular policies are factors that can inhibit the successful implementation of climate policies. This report therefore analysis factors that affect public acceptability of current climate policies.

The methods used in this report include a systematic literature review and secondary data analysis. While this provides a very good overview of possible explanatory factors, the report also examines the determinants systematically by combining different theoretical and methodological approaches. Those are economic and social-psychological frameworks and mixed-method research design.

The report finds amongst other things that both the characteristics of people (social-psychological, socio-economic and demographic) and the characteristics of proposed policies are important factors influencing their public acceptability. Moreover, people generally tend to prefer policy instruments resulting in lower prices of environmentally friendly products and services (e.g. subsidies for renewable energy sources) opposite to instruments increasing the prices of those environmentally harmful (e.g. fossil fuel taxation). The report concludes that a policy instrument labelled as ‘tax’ is significantly less acceptable than an unlabelled policy instrument, even though they have the same characteristics.

Tax-aversion seems to stem from:

• perception that taxes are not very effective, infringe on freedom and are unfair
• distributional concerns, especially concerns about regressive effects, however normative beliefs about distribution of cost or benefits are very variable
• feeling that people are not morally responsible for reduction of negative environmental impacts
• a lack of confidence in politicians and other citizens
• a lack of understanding how a tax can reduce the externalities and increase welfare. General public may not comprehend the difference between a Pigouvian tax and a Ramsey tax and perceives taxes only as a way to increase revenues;

Support for Pigouvian taxes may be raised by:

• taking into account distributional consequences, especially protecting from regressive effects
• strengthening trust in government and public organizations (transparency, public participation, etc.; see literature on public governance and public trust)
• support acquiring information about how the taxes work, how they can reduce the externalities and increase welfare and about their effectiveness;
• earmarking the revenues for environmental measures and revenues are targeted to narrowly specified groups
• public investments in environmentally friendly technologies, transport infrastructure, and renewable energy;