August 13, 2015

Lessons from Australia: Understanding public support for carbon pricing

A new study finds that acceptance of a policy is an important process through which people’s beliefs and economic ideologies influence their support for putting a price on carbon emissions, but general acceptance doesn’t always lead to support.

A University of Washington researcher led a study looking at views towards a carbon pricing policy before and after the 2013 federal election in Australia, which was the first nation to repeal an existing carbon pricing policy.

Despite heated debate on the issue leading up to the election, people’s views about the carbon price were fairly stable, the researchers’ national survey found. Many more people accepted the policy than actively supported it, and acceptance was necessary before support, according to their analysis published Aug. 10 in Nature Climate Change.

Lead author Stacia Dreyer, a postdoctoral researcher in the UW School of Marine and Environmental Affairs, did the research as part of her doctoral work at the University of Maine.

Standard opinion surveys ask people one or a few questions at a single time to measure approval ratings, but those polls don’t measure how an individual person’s position may shift, or which factors may influence their approval.

The new study analyzed results from 516 people who completed a detailed online questionnaire both before and after the election, as well as several hundred people who answered questions at just one of the two time points. The survey asked people about their political preferences, behaviors and thoughts on various aspects of the carbon price.

The researchers then used those responses to measure people’s acceptance, which is their attitude in favor of the idea. They also measured support, meaning whether that person would pursue a concrete action such as signing a petition, donating money or ultimately voting in favor of a policy.

Policy acceptance was higher than support at both times, and acceptance did not always lead to support, highlighting the need to measure acceptance and support separately.

“If we don’t distinguish between them, we run the risk of either underestimating acceptance or overestimating support,” Dreyer said.

The authors found that higher levels of perceived fairness and effectiveness were associated with increased levels of both acceptance and support, whereas higher levels of free-market ideology were associated with decreased acceptance and support.

“Asking the 500 largest emitters to pay for the carbon they are producing and then redistributing some of those funds to low-income households to offset potential electricity cost increases, through income-tax deductions, was seen as fair by those who accepted and supported the policy,” Dreyer said.

On the flipside, economic ideology could influence people’s positions in the other direction.

“Individuals who had a high subscription to a free-market ideology were less likely to support or accept the carbon pricing policy,” Dreyer said.

Her current research at the UW is looking at public perceptions on the research and development of tidal-power technology. She said she is less familiar with carbon pricing situation in Washington. In this state, Gov. Jay Inslee is pursuing a cap on carbon emissions, while a competing citizens’ initiative hopes to place a question on the 2016 ballot asking Washingtonians to support a carbon tax similar to the one in British Columbia.

Co-authors on the new paper are Mario Teisl and Shannon McCoy at the University of Maine and Iain Walker at Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation. The research was funded by the National Science Foundation (EPS-0904155), CSIRO and the Maine Sustainability Solutions Initiative.

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For more information, contact Dreyer at 206-685-1837 or sdreyer@uw.edu.

Adapted from a University of Maine article, “Public Acceptance, Support of Climate Policies Focus of Study.”