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Fifty-five Crowd-Sourced Designs Assessing Carbon Pricing Support

Author

Listed:
  • Armando Holzknecht

  • Rene Schwaiger

  • Esther Blanco

  • Jürgen Huber

  • Michael Kirchler

  • co-authors

Abstract

A carbon price is an effective and cost-efficient policy to mitigate emissions, yet low public acceptance and limited political support remain major barriers to its widespread implementation. This crowd-sourced “many-designs” project presents results from 55 behavioral interventions on real-world support for carbon pricing, independently developed by international research teams. By implementing the interventions simultaneously with almost 20,000 U.S. residents, this pre-registered study shows very small positive but statistically significant effects of behavioral interventions on real-world support, and stated support, including the willingness to endorse a carbon price that internalizes the social costs of $120 per ton of CO2 emissions (Cohen’s d’s: 10 0.04–0.08; between 1.1–2.4 percentage points in increased support across outcomes). Further-more, the results reveal low-to-medium between-study heterogeneity (ͳ: 0.07–0.12). Lastly, we identify strong overconfidence among research teams regarding the expected effects of their interventions and those of their peers, indicating a miscalibration of community expectations.

Suggested Citation

  • Armando Holzknecht & Rene Schwaiger & Esther Blanco & Jürgen Huber & Michael Kirchler & co-authors, 2026. "Fifty-five Crowd-Sourced Designs Assessing Carbon Pricing Support," Working Papers 2026-06, Faculty of Economics and Statistics, Universität Innsbruck.
  • Handle: RePEc:inn:wpaper:2026-06
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    References listed on IDEAS

    as
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