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This paper analyzes the role that the climate change concern (CCC_i) has on the willingness to accept an environmental tax. The author aims to grasp how individual general tax preferences can differ with respect to the specific (environmental) tax. He focuses attention to the Italian case since it has been argued that the potential acceptability of a carbon tax in Italy is relatively high, and this topic has been scarcely explored so far among Italian citizens (Rotaris and Danielis, 2019).

The author conducted an online survey among 514 Italian economics students.

The CCC_i positively influences the environmental tax morale (ETM_i). The general tax morale (TM_i) positively affects the specific (environmental) TM_i. The CCC_i alters individual tax preferences. The author evidenced that also subjects with low TM_i turned out to be willing to pay an environmental tax if aware of the environmental issues.

Although the author used a common methodology in this strand of research, he is aware that in an online survey individuals can be influenced by the self-reporting and hypothetical choice bias (see Swamy et al., 2001), that in turn can characterize their reported preferences. Moreover, even if economics university students are commonly used as a subject pool in experimental economics settings, and although several studies showed that the behavioral responses of students are largely the same as those of nonstudents in identical experiments (for a discussion see Alm, 2012; Choo et al., 2016), there is awareness that in this case, they are not taxpayers yet (Barabas and Jerit, 2010).

The author’s results remark the importance of increasing climate change awareness among people to let them be more willing to pay the environmental tax, for instance through investments in sensibilization campaigns on the importance of energy source usage and climate-related topic. Then, an increase in the general TM_i leads to an increase in the specific (environmental) TM_i. The author’s evidence showed that people with high tax morale logically recognize the positive impact of paying an environmental tax when the CCC_i increases, since the more the theme becomes important, the larger the willingness to pay the specific tax. For this reason, policymakers should carry on campaigns to increase the general level of TM_i to increase the overall tax compliance level and the relative tax revenues, following the guidelines given by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (2019) to support taxpayer education programs, such as including TM_i research and analysis into education programs, improving the ease of paying taxes or strengthening revenue–expenditure links to build the social contract.

It should be paramount to increase awareness about environmental topics among people in general and among those who are relatively tax immoral. The author’s results remark on the importance of targeting energy and environmental tax policies to groups rather than to individuals. According to this evidence, we support the use of nonmonetary tools to nudge people in the environmental transition by changing their behavior in energy use, for instance through the taxation on fuel and other nonrenewable energy resources.

It is the first empirical study that analyzes the impact of CCC_i on the environmental TM_i in Italy, in particular controlling for the role of the general willingness to pay taxes (TM_i). To obtain individual attitudes toward tax payment, most of the empirical studies in behavioral economics employ international surveys. For studies across citizens living in European countries, the European Social Survey (ESS) and European Values Study (EVS) represent the most used ones (see, for instance, Martinez-Vazquez and Torgler (2009) in Spain; Torgler and Werner (2005) in Germany; Nemore and Morone (2019) in Italy). However, these surveys do not allow to study the relationship between the environmental and general TM_i across the same subject pool. In fact, despite the ESS (2016) provides individual responses about the willingness to pay an environmental tax, it does not provide information about the general individual attitude toward tax payment (this information is contained only in the ESS wave of 2004, hence referring to a different subject pool). On the contrary, each wave of the EVS (i.e. 2008, 2017) provides information about the general individual attitude toward tax payment, but this survey does not provide a question regarding the willingness to pay an environmental tax. Therefore, to obtain information about the willingness to pay both general and environmental taxes, across the same subject pool, it is needed to carry out a survey.

This paper aims to shed light on the relationship between intergenerational labor mobility and tax morale among European citizens, given the relatively limited evidence on the potential influence of tax compliance behavior on future inequalities.

Exploiting data from the European Values Study (2008), we show that the larger the intergenerational mobility, i.e. better economic conditions of children respect to their parents, the larger the willingness to pay taxes. In this vein, the subjective tax payment may be meant as an investment which could be rewarded with a more mobile society result by considering different estimation strategies. This evidence remarks the importance to foster intergenerational mobility to build a more tax-compliant society.

The linkage between mobility and tax morale is stronger and significant across citizens living in high income classes, and in countries where there is a commitment of the Government in guaranteeing more opportunities to citizens regardless of their familiar starting conditions (more defamiliarized countries). We further show that the intergenerational mobility significantly shapes the attitude towards tax payment only among individuals who claim for independence from their family context (i.e. those showing less family ties). This evidence remarks the importance to foster intergenerational mobility to build a more tax-compliant society.

We revisit the linkage between attitude toward tax compliance and inequality, on the light of the intergenerational labor mobility, that may be seen as the dependence between children's and parents' earnings. Given the insights from the existing studies, this paper represents the first empirical work that aims to analyze the potential relationship between intergenerational mobility and personal attitude toward tax payment across European citizens.