Why Energy Taxes Face Opposition: Household Vulnerability and Price-ShockStress Pathways
Keywords:
Tax Innovation, Accounting, Compliance, Public FinanceAbstract
Purpose – To explain public support for energy taxes through behavioral, institutional, and psychological mechanisms beyond
cost-based accounts.
Design/methodology/approach – Survey-based structural equation modeling tests direct, mediated, and moderated pathways
linking perceptions, household responses, and policy support.
Findings – Perceived tax burdens reduce support mainly through sequential increases in household vulnerability and price-shock
stress, while fairness and institutional trust directly enhance support and indirectly buffer insecurity. Climate concern and energy
literacy raise acceptance largely by reducing vulnerability and stress rather than operating solely as normative justifications.
Proposed moderation by household responsibility roles is not supported, indicating that stress-related mechanisms operate
broadly across households rather than being strongly conditional on role-based exposure.
Originality/value – This study advances a behavioral–institutional model that reframes the political cost of energy taxation as a
psychological process in which insecurity and stress transmit burdens into opposition. By empirically establishing vulnerability
and price-shock stress as central serial mediators, it moves the literature beyond direct-effect explanations and clarifies how
institutional and cognitive resources function as resilience-building channels that sustain policy legitimacy.
Research implications – Acceptance-oriented tax design should combine targeted compensation, credible governance, and
communication strategies that reduce perceived insecurity and stress, thereby improving legitimacy and feasibility of energy
taxes.
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