We contribute to the growing literature on how political support for domestic policies that contribute to global collective goods is impacted by other countries’ policy actions. To do so, we focus on carbon taxation, one of the most important yet contested policy instruments for mitigating global warming, in the world’s third largest economy, Japan. Using a combination of two experiments embedded in a representative public opinion survey, we examine arguments relating to how the adoption and level of ambition of other countries’ carbon taxes affect the public’s preferences for current and future carbon tax designs. We find evidence that the choices of other countries affect both support for carbon taxation and preferences over its design. More ambitious carbon pricing in other countries increases support for carbon taxation, while less ambitious pricing reduces support. Moreover, information about lower carbon prices in other countries decreases support more than other countries having no carbon taxation at all. Public support for more stringent domestic carbon pricing thus hinges on the policy choices of other countries, contrary to other environmental issues. Our research also shows, however, that particular domestic policy design choices can help in mitigating otherwise negative effects of non-cooperative behavior by other countries.

我们为越来越多的文献做出贡献，这些文献涉及对促进全球集体利益的国内政策的政治支持如何受到其他国家政策行动的影响。为此，我们专注于碳税，这是世界第三大经济体日本缓解全球变暖的最重要但最有争议的政策工具之一。使用嵌入在代表性民意调查中的两个实验的组合，我们研究了与其他国家碳税的采用和雄心程度如何影响公众对当前和未来碳税设计的偏好有关的论点。我们发现有证据表明其他国家的选择会影响对碳税的支持和对其设计的偏好。其他国家更加雄心勃勃的碳定价增加了对碳税的支持，而不太雄心勃勃的定价会减少支持。此外，与根本没有碳税的其他国家相比，其他国家关于较低碳价格的信息减少了更多的支持。因此，与其他环境问题相反，公众对更严格的国内碳定价的支持取决于其他国家的政策选择。然而，我们的研究还表明，特定的国内政策设计选择有助于减轻其他国家不合作行为的负面影响。