The politization of green taxes: How information and party cues affect popular support

Transitioning from fossil fuels and nuclear energy to an age of renewable energy is a challenge for many industrialized countries. Despite being considered the most effective and economically efficient instrument to generate continuous and long-term incentives for environmentally-friendly innovation and practices, carbon taxes are particularly difficult to implement politically. Scholars have demonstrated that the cost perceptions that characterize carbon taxes and a low level of knowledge about how these instruments work are fundamental reasons for their unpopularity. Against this background, recent research has investigated whether better informed citizens and more visible policy benefits could increase policy support but suggests that the link between information, perceived benefits and policy support is complex. This is the starting point of our contribution, in which we delve deeper into the question whether and under which conditions more information leads to stronger policy support. We thereby consider different types of information, namely information about how the policy works as well as about its individual and collective benefits. Moreover, based on recent research, we expect that the visibility and relevance of these policies’ costs and benefits strongly depend on the politization of the issue. We therefore further theorize and test, how information effects vary contingent on party-political constellations. We test our claims using original survey data from Switzerland, including a conjoint experiment combined with a split ballot design with information treatment. These results produce relevant policy implications regarding the design of carbon taxes and the role of knowledge and beliefs for environmental attitudes and behavior.