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Understanding public support for domestic contributions to global collective goods

Results from a survey experiment on carbon taxation in Japan

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Abstract

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.

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Notes

  1. https://unfccc.int/about-us/regional-collaboration-centres/the-ci-aca-initiative/about-carbon-pricing#eq-6 (last accessed on December 17, 2020)

  2. https://www.env.go.jp/press/files/en/868.pdf (last accessed on April 27, 2021)

  3. http://www.globalcarbonatlas.org/en/CO2-emissions (last accessed on April 27, 2021)

  4. https://www.env.go.jp/en/earth/cc/2030indc.html (last accessed on December 26, 2019)

  5. https://www.kikonet.org/info/press-release/2015-04-30/2030-climate-target (last accessed on December 26, 2019)

  6. https://climateactiontracker.org/countries/japan/ (last accessed on December 26, 2019)

  7. https://ec.europa.eu/clima/policies/strategies/2030_en (last accessed on December 26, 2019)

  8. https://climateactiontracker.org/countries/japan/ (last accessed on December 26, 2019)

  9. Other industrialized countries’ carbon tax rates are in fact much higher, including those in Sweden (1991, US$127), Switzerland (2008, US$96), Finland (1990, US$60–70), Norway (1991, US$3–59), France (2014, US$50), Iceland (2010, US$31), Denmark (1992, US$26), Ireland (2010, US$22), Slovenia (1996, US$19), Spain (2014, US$17), Portugal (2015, US$14), Latvia (2004, US$5), Chile (2017, US$5), Singapore (2019, US$4), and Estonia (2000, US$4) (World Bank 2019, 25-26). Information in parentheses shows the year of introduction and tax rates as of 2019 (World Bank 2019).

  10. Countries with very low carbon taxes include Poland, Ukraine, Estonia, and Mexico.

  11. Shortly before the introduction of the carbon tax, Keidanren called on the government to rethink the new tax because it raises energy costs further and might push companies to move operations to countries that regulate carbon emissions less. (https://www.reuters.com/article/us-energy-japan-tax/japans-new-carbon-tax-to-cost-utilities-1billion-annually-idUSBRE8990G520121010, last accessed on December 26, 2019).

  12. https://country-level-scc.github.io/explorer/ (last accessed on December 26, 2019)

  13. Likewise, policy diffusion studies analyze policy interaction among countries. However, they address the effect of a country’s policy “adoption” on other countries rather than the effect of its policy “level,” the latter of which is our main analytical focus. While diffusion studies suggest that geographically or socially similar or proximate countries have greater policy influences, we do not distinguish proximities of countries to avoid the complexity of our survey design.

  14. The carbon price of 3 USD/tCO2 (from World Bank carbon price 2018) was converted into yen (340 yen/tCO2). Then, this was multiplied by Japan’s CO2 emissions per capita (9.5 tCO2) to calculate monthly carbon tax costs per person.

  15. We conducted manipulation checks to make sure respondents understood each frame correctly. Details on manipulation checks are presented in A.2. in the Appendix.

  16. The results are robust to using respondents’ ratings instead, full details of which are presented in A.8. in the Appendix. We also re-examined the results with a sample that excludes respondents who failed our comprehension checks. The results are presented in A.7. in the Appendix.

  17. As before, we present the conjoint results from the forced choices, but the main results hold with rating choices, which are presented in A.8. in the Appendix.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Patrick Bayer, Lukas Fesenfeld, Dennis Kolcava, Vally Koubi, Matto Mildenberger, Michael Tomz, and two anonymous reviewers for very valuable comments. This research was made possible by generous funding from Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (#18H03623).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Royal Holloway, University of London, London, UK

    Liam F. Beiser-McGrath

  2. ETH Zürich, Zürich, Switzerland

    Liam F. Beiser-McGrath & Thomas Bernauer

  3. Kansai University, Osaka, Japan

    Jaehyun Song

  4. Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan

    Azusa Uji

Authors
  1. Liam F. Beiser-McGrath
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  2. Thomas Bernauer
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  3. Jaehyun Song
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  4. Azusa Uji
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Contributions

Author ordering is alphabetical, reflecting the authors’ equal contribution. LFB-M, TB, JS, and AU jointly designed the study. JS and AU collected the data. JS analyzed the data. LFB-M, TB, and AU wrote the paper.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Azusa Uji.

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The Institutional Review Board (IRB) of the Kobe University approved the survey experiment described in this article. Informed consent was obtained from all subjects.

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Beiser-McGrath, L.F., Bernauer, T., Song, J. et al. Understanding public support for domestic contributions to global collective goods. Climatic Change 166, 51 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-021-03137-6

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