Economists and policy experts have long argued for the implementation of carbon taxes as the most cost-efficient way to decrease carbon emissions and enhance climate change mitigation. Public support for such taxes is generally lacking, however, compromising their political feasibility. While a range of determinants of climate policy attitudes have been studied, the role of institutional context, and specifically corruption in explaining public aversion towards climate taxes has been largely unexplored. This paper investigates the links between corruption perceptions, trust, and attitudes towards climate taxes in a survey experiment fielded in Sweden and Mexico. Using randomized vignettes to stimulate high-corrupt and low-corrupt perceptions among about 3000 respondents from each country, the analyses evaluate the effect of corruption on trust and attitudes towards climate taxes and explore potential individual-level mechanisms at play using post-treatment questions. The study shows that increased corruption perceptions generate negative attitudes towards climate taxes, even among those who hold pro-environmental value orientations and concerns and political value orientations in favor of state regulation. Mediation analyses suggest that decreased levels of political and institutional trust may explain this effect, but that negative policy-specific beliefs also may play a mediating role. The study contributes to an increased understanding of the negative effect of corruption on climate policy attitudes in diverse institutional settings and outlines avenues for future research.

中文翻译：

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腐败是否会影响人们对碳税的态度？来自墨西哥和瑞典的实验证据

长期以来，经济学家和政策专家一直认为实施碳税是减少碳排放和加强气候变化减缓的最具成本效益的方式。然而，公众普遍缺乏对此类税收的支持，从而损害了其政治可行性。虽然人们已经研究了气候政策态度的一系列决定因素，但制度环境，特别是腐败在解释公众对气候税的厌恶方面的作用在很大程度上尚未得到探索。本文通过在瑞典和墨西哥进行的一项调查实验，调查了腐败认知、信任和对气候税的态度之间的联系。这些分析利用随机小插图激发每个国家约 3000 名受访者对高腐败和低腐败的看法，评估腐败对信任和对气候税态度的影响，并利用处理后问题探索潜在的个人层面机制。研究表明，腐败观念的增强导致人们对气候税持负面态度，即使是那些持有环保价值取向和关注点以及支持国家监管的政治价值取向的人也是如此。中介分析表明，政治和制度信任水平的下降可以解释这种效应，但负面的特定政策信念也可能发挥中介作用。该研究有助于加深对腐败对不同机构环境中气候政策态度的负面影响的了解，并概述了未来研究的途径。