According to most economists, putting a price on carbon is indispensable for reducing emissions and thus for reaching the temperature targets of the Paris Agreement in an efficient way. Despite this broad consensus among economists, however, carbon prices often face strong public opposition. It thus seems as if people assess carbon prices differently.

The goal of this project, which is joint work with researchers from TU Munich, is to better understand what people know and how they reason about carbon prices. Furthermore, we want to analyse whether we are able to shape people’s support by providing different types of (economic) information. For this purpose, we conducted an online survey experiment in a representative sample of the German voting population in Winter 2020 – shortly before the German carbon price, which affects fossil fuels such as heating oil and gasoline, was introduced.

Initial results suggest that – although most respondents are aware of climate change and consider it to be a serious issue – the majority of respondents does not support the introduction of the national carbon price. However, it seems as if providing specific information on carbon prices does not only affect people’s reasoning, but also increases their support.