Hostility towards carbon taxes in rural areas is being fuelled by a deep-seated belief that the state unfairly prioritises the urban centres of political and economic power, new research suggests.
A study by researchers at King's College London and the University of Oslo found that resistance to green levies in the countryside is driven not just by the financial cost, but by a sense of unequal treatment at the hands of government.
Academics surveyed 3,000 adults across the UK to investigate this urban-rural divide. As part of an experiment, respondents were shown official data highlighting a stark disparity in public transport spending: £1,272 per person in London compared with as little as £361 in the East Midlands.
On seeing these figures, support for carbon taxation plummeted by 10 percentage points among rural respondents. Conversely, the same information had virtually no impact on the views of those living in non-rural areas.
"When people living in rural areas perceive of unequal treatment by the state, they are less supportive of carbon taxes," the authors David Hope, Julian Limberg, and Yves Steinebach said. They argue that rural communities view green taxes as an unfair "double disadvantage," punishing populations that have already been neglected by the state.
The academics cite backlashes against environmental policies, such as the 'Gilets Jaunes' protests around rising fuel taxes in France and the public opposition to British Columbia's carbon tax in Canada, as examples of protests that had their roots in rural areas.
The findings pose a challenge for policymakers assuming that financial incentives alone can solve the issue. The study indicates that even schemes designed to recycle tax revenue back to households, such as rebates, may fail to overcome opposition if the underlying sense of geographical unfairness persists.
The authors conclude that tackling these deep-rooted resentments has become "crucial for building broad public support for carbon taxation".
