Rationing may seem dramatic, but so is climate change. This may explain why support is quite high. One advantage of allocation is that it can be perceived as fair if it is independent of income.

“Policies perceived as fair often enjoy higher levels of acceptance,” explains Oskar Lindgren, a doctoral student in natural resources and sustainable development at the Department of Earth Sciences at Uppsala University, who led the study, which is now published in Humanities and Social Sciences Communications .

To achieve climate goals, policies are needed that effectively reduce consumption with high climate impact, such as meat and fuel. At the same time, public acceptance of a particular policy instrument strongly depends on whether it is perceived as fair or not.

Research in this area has so far mainly examined economic instruments such as carbon taxes, with little attention paid to other instruments that could be effective, such as allocation.

A new study involving nearly 9,000 people in Brazil, India, Germany, South Africa and the United States compares the acceptability of rationing fuel and so-called “carbon-intensive” foods such as meat with the acceptability of taxes on the same products. (Uppsala University, more at phys.org)