社会与工程心理学研究室知识库

气候变化是全人类的重大威胁。作为重要减排政策的碳税得到全球的普遍关注和认可，但是面临着公众低支持度的困境。而且，现实情境中，任何政策都不是孤立运行的，相邻时期内其他同类气候政策对碳税造成的潜在影响近来也开始受到研究者的重视。当前我国正在试点实施的碳普惠政策和已受到决策者关注的碳税政策是我国应对气候变化的两个关键政策，理解碳普惠是否以及如何影响公众对未来可能实施的碳税政策的态度具有重大意义。

成本与收益权衡是公众决定政策态度的重点考虑内容，而碳税的成本主要体现为个人为自身碳排放所缴纳的碳排放税，收益则体现为对整体气候和环境的积极作用。已有研究将重心放在直接操纵碳税的成本上，通过降低人们感知到的碳税成本来提高支持度，但是大量研究也表明并非直接与政策本身相关的因素才能引起态度改变，其他先行因素也可能引起人们感知到目标政策属性变化。

不同于已有研究，鉴于碳普惠政策的经济激励属性，本研究提出了碳普惠可能影响碳税的路径包括感知个人成本和感知减排效果。前者基于心理账户理论，指的是碳普惠的实施通过提供物质奖励为人们的环境心理账户提供了一定的缓冲，进而降低了承受碳税的痛苦感，因此能够一定程度上提高对碳税的支持度；后者则基于目标理论，指的是当人们认为碳普惠对实现低碳减排任务已经做出重要贡献后，便可能降低碳税必要性感知。因此，假如感知个人成本占主导作用，则碳普惠会对碳税支持度起到积极的作用，而假如感知减排效果占主导作用，则碳普惠会对探索支持度起到消极的影响。

为了检验碳普惠是否以及如何影响碳税政策的支持度，本研究通过四个实验进行了系统的探讨。研究一通过大样本调研实验探索了碳普惠启动对碳税支持度的主效应是否存在，结果表明在有模拟碳普惠实施的启动条件下，人们对碳税的支持度得到了显著提高，并利用中介分析探索了感知碳税个人成本的机制，初步验证了碳普惠通过物质奖励降低实施碳税的成本感知从而提高碳税支持度的潜在解释。研究二进一步通过单因素实验设计更为“两极化”的操纵强化或削弱碳普惠对碳税成本的补偿作用感知，从而更加深入地探索了碳普惠通过感知个人成本影响碳税支持度的路径。研究三通过单因素实验设计操纵了感知碳普惠减排效果以改变减排任务总进程感知，但研究结果并没有发现碳税减排效果感知和碳税态度产生显著差异。研究四通过双因素设计综合考察了上述两种机制在同时操纵的条件下是否能够起作用以及探索是否存在交互效果，结果依旧表明感知碳税成本是碳普惠影响碳税支持度的路径。

本研究为现有不同气候政策之间公众态度潜在的相互影响提供了进一步的证据，并且由于碳普惠政策本身的特殊经济属性，因此从感知成本的角度在现有相关研究的基础上补充了潜在的理论路径。在政策实践中，探索两者之间在客观性质之外的公众感知层面上的联系将有助于未来我国碳税的顺利出台，先行酝酿良好的社会舆论氛围，综合提升碳普惠和碳税的效果。

With the increasingly serious threat of climate change, carbon tax, as an efficient emission reduction policy, has gained firm support from many countries worldwide, but it always faces the dilemma of low public support. Also, in reality, no policies are isolated, and researchers have recently begun to pay attention to the potential impact of other similar climate policies in adjacent periods on carbon taxes. The Carbon Generalized System of Preferences (CGSP), which is being currently piloted in China and is expected to be officially promoted in the near future, and the carbon tax policy, which is attracting increasing attention from policymakers and climate scientists, are two key policies for China to tackle climate change. Due to the potential proximity of these two policies, it is of great theoretical and practical significance to understand whether and how CGSP affects the public's perception of carbon tax policy.

Cost-benefit balancing is the key element affecting public support. As for carbon tax, the main cost is the paying for individuals’ carbon emissions while the benefits are embodied in the positive effects of the global climate and environment. Most of the existing research focuses on the reduction of the perceived costs of carbon to increase public support, but a large number of studies have shown that factors not directly related to the policy itself could cause attitude change as well. Spillover effect in the study of pro-environment behaviors suggests the potential of indirect factors to change policy attitudes. As a pilot policy, CGSP is likely to become an important factor in changing people's perception of some characteristics of carbon tax. Different from previous studies, in view of the incentive nature of CGSP, this study is based on the mental accounting theory, which indicates that the implementation of CGSP provides a certain buffer for people's environmental mental account by providing material rewards, thus reducing the pain of paying for carbon tax. On the other hand, referring to the goal theory, when people believe that CGSP has made a significant progress in carbon emission reduction, they might no longer think that the implementation of carbon tax will be of that much necessity as before. Under these two potential mechanisms, if perceived individual cost plays a dominant role, CGSP will have a positive effect on public support for carbon tax, while if perceived emission reduction effects play a dominant role, CGSP will have the opposite effect. In order to test whether and how CGSP affects public support for carbon tax policy, this study conducted a systematic exploration with four studies. In the first study, a large sample was used to explore whether the main effect of CGSP on support for carbon tax existed, and the results showed that public support for carbon tax was significantly increased under the simulated implementation of CGSP, and the mechanism of perceived individual cost was then preliminarily verified. In the second study, we further manipulated the extent of connection between CGSP and carbon tax by presenting the two policies jointly or separately to change the level of perceived cost, and the path of CGSP affecting public support for carbon tax through perceived individual cost was further verified. Study 3 manipulated CGSP’s perceived progress in emission reduction but did not find change in perceived emission reduction effect of CGSP, and there was no significant difference in the attitude of carbon tax. Study 4 comprehensively investigated whether there was interaction between these two factors. The results still showed that the perceived individual cost of carbon tax was the mechanism through which CGSP affected public support for carbon tax.

This research provides further evidence to the study of interaction between different policies and public attitude towards these policies. And because of the special incentive nature of CGSP, the current research was able to add potential theoretical implications from the perspective of perceived cost. Future implementation of carbon tax could benefit from this study regarding preparing the public with positive attitude, thereby ultimately fulfilling the dual goals of peaking carbon emission by 2030 and carbon neutrality by 2060.