People also evaluate policies based on their type and design. Information policies like labelling are often the most preferred type of consumer policy, likely because they are voluntary and any costs related to implementation or administration are often not obvious to the consumer (Ejelöv et al., 2022). Likewise, it has been argued that the often high degree of support for subsidies may partly be due to the non-transparent financial cost to consumers (for example, subsidies being funded by an increase in other taxes) (Jagers & Hammar, 2009). Environmental taxes and regulations are, on the other hand, often less acceptable to citizens, presumably because of the more apparent monetary costs of taxes, borne by the taxpayer, and the coercive nature of regulations (Cherry et al., 2012). There is however, evidence in Sweden suggesting that already implemented taxes and regulations are on average as acceptable to citizens as subsidies (Ejelöv et al., 2022). This may be an example of the general effect of people expressing more positive opinions of policies once they have experienced the effects of the policy (Eliasson & Jonsson, 2011; Nilsson et al., 2016). The difference in attitudes toward taxes/regulations and subsidies might therefore be more pronounced before than after implementation.
While hypothetical taxes are generally less acceptable compared to subsidies and information policies, certain design choices can make them more popular. Specifying how the revenues from an environmental tax will be used generally creates more positive attitudes toward the tax (Maestre-Andrés et al., 2021). Using revenues specifically for green investments or other types of funding for environmental projects tends to be the most acceptable (Maestre-Andrés et al., 2019; Ewald et al., 2022). For example, attitudes toward a Swedish air passenger tax became more positive when revenues were used to finance an increased use of biofuels for aviation (Matti et al., 2022). This may be due to a perception of increased policy effectiveness such that possible inefficiencies of the actual tax may be offset by using revenues for projects that can effectively improve environmental conditions. However, in discussions concerning a tax on red meat, Swedish and Norwegian citizens preferred using the tax revenues for reducing the VAT on vegetables and fruit (Grimsrud et al., 2019) or other unspecified food. In this case, funding environmental projects was among the least acceptable uses (Ejelöv et al., forthcoming). This example indicates that using revenues to reduce consumer costs is another important priority, which goes beyond the question of ensuring policy effectiveness.
As policies with actual or perceived individual financial costs are often negatively evaluated, researchers have investigated the acceptability of different strategies to reduce the financial burden on consumers. Redistributing tax revenues back to citizens in the form of a lump-sum payment can increase the acceptability of a tax, especially when the (positive) distributional effects of recycling are communicated (Carattini et al., 2017). While lowering income taxes to compensate for the cost associated with an environmental tax is often one of the less acceptable ways to reduce costs for consumers (Beiser-McGrath & Bernauer, 2019), in Sweden, reducing income taxes as a compensatory mechanism increases support for raising the carbon tax rate among right-wing voters but not left-wing voters (Jagers et al., 2019).
Certain other design choices like implementing taxes in conjunction with subsidies that offset the possible negative effects of the tax (such as subsidizing public transport while raising fuel taxes), or bundling taxes into packages of policies with a connected aim, can increase acceptability (Eriksson et al., 2008; Fesenfelt et al., 2020). This logic may also apply to the order in which policies are implemented, where taxes can appear more acceptable if their introduction has been proceeded by the implementation of a policy that offsets possible negative consequences of the tax (Montfort et al., 2023). Consumers further tend to prefer policies targeting industry, likely because they do not perceive these policies to impact them as much as consumer-directed policies do, and because they perceive that they alone do not bear the burden of responsibility (Hardisty et al., 2019; Kantenbacher et al., 2018). Policy packages where production requirements are introduced alongside consumption taxes can for these reasons also increase the acceptability of the proposal (Fesenfelt, 2022).