In order to reach climate goals, governments need to gain support from their voters for the necessary policy interventions, such as carbon dioxide taxes. Previous research concludes that people often do not support and legitimize such taxes because they perceive them as unfair. However, the notion of fairness implies a multitude of factors and despite attempts of the previous research to further nuance people’s fairness perceptions, we currently lack a more precise understanding of what people mean when they regard carbon taxes as unfair. In this article, we thoroughly investigate this problem by using original survey data from YouGov collected in the United States in 2018 and analyzing open-ended survey responses on why people think carbon taxes are unfair. Applying structural topic modeling, we unpack the multi-dimensional meaning of unfairness, as perceived by the US population. The results from our analysis show that people regard carbon taxes based on gas pricing as unfair because they perceive gas prices already being high, because of the need to drive, unfairness for the poor or rural population, lack of trust in government, or considerations that the purpose of the tax is unjustified. These findings help provide a more nuanced policy design to address fairness concerns related to carbon taxes.

为了实现气候目标，政府需要获得选民的支持，以进行必要的政策干预，例如二氧化碳税。先前的研究得出的结论是，人们通常不支持此类税收并将其合法化，因为他们认为这些税收不公平。然而，公平的概念包含多种因素，尽管之前的研究试图进一步改变人们对公平的看法，但我们目前缺乏更准确的理解，当人们认为碳税不公平时，他们的意思是什么。在本文中，我们通过使用 2018 年在美国收集的 YouGov 原始调查数据，并分析有关人们为什么认为碳税不公平的开放式调查答复，彻底调查了这个问题。应用结构主题建模，我们解开不公平的多维含义，正如美国民众所认为的那样。我们的分析结果表明，人们认为基于天然气定价的碳税是不公平的，因为他们认为天然气价格已经很高，因为需要开车，对穷人或农村人口不公平，对政府缺乏信任，或者考虑到征税的目的是不合理的。这些发现有助于提供更细致入微的政策设计，以解决与碳税相关的公平问题。