Abstract Carbon taxes are a key instrument for mitigating global warming, yet their political feasibility remains contested. A vast literature examines public acceptability, but findings often diverge due to varying elicitation methods, policy designs, and contextual factors such as timing, reduction targets, and revenue use. These inconsistencies complicate interpretation and challenge the validity of reviews and meta-analyses. This article systematizes major differences in measurement approaches and policy attributes and illustrates their implications through an extensive within-subject case study (n = 1415) that controls for timing, sample, and national context. Results show that carbon tax acceptability depends strongly on the elicitation method. Explicit survey formats yield lower acceptability than implicit model-based measures; a substantial gap exists between preferred and maximum acceptable tax levels; and revenue recycling proves essential as acceptability declines sharply without it but rises when revenues are returned as rebates or earmarked for public transport and climate protection. These findings highlight that methodological choices substantially affect measured acceptability and that policymakers should rely on context-specific evidence rather than meta-analyses alone. Careful survey design and transparent revenue use can meaningfully enhance public acceptability of carbon taxation.

Climate and environmental policies are often adopted faster than they are carried out. The most difficult part is moving from commitment to implementation, translating goals into workable instruments, capable institutions, and credible monitoring. Fiscal constraints, administrative capacity, and data gaps narrow what is feasible and shape which groups bear costs and receive benefits. Better policy design and learning require attention to the full policy cycle, from problem definition to implementation and evaluation, with equity and international market pressures and cross-border policy spillovers treated as core constraints rather than side issues. This editorial frames these constraints and situates the collection's contributions within a policy-cycle perspective focused on capacity, uncertainty, distributional outcomes, and external pressures. It goes beyond summarizing the collection by showing that governing the transition is less about setting goals and more about managing the interplay of capacity, evidence, equity, and international market pressure, and cross-border policy spillovers. This gap matters because the development model that raised living standards has also heightened environmental risks, while the capacity to manage them remains uneven. Over the last five decades, global economic growth has improved welfare for billions. Yet the same development trajectory intensified energy demand, deepened dependence on finite resources, and accelerated environmental degradationthrough climate change, deforestation, biodiversity loss, and persistent air and water

Abstract Previous studies found that households’ energy use and consumption of goods and services contribute greatly to increasing carbon emissions. This study estimated household carbon footprints, including direct and indirect emissions. Using the 2019 Taiwan Survey of Family Income and Expenditure, we investigated the heterogeneous relationship between household income and carbon emissions. Income sources were divided into six categories: compensation of employees, entrepreneurial income, property income, imputed rent income, transfer income, and miscellaneous income. Our results indicate that the income–emission elasticity for household total emission, direct emission, and indirect emission are 0.62, 0.37, and 0.84, respectively. Household income is positively associated with household carbon footprint, especially among households with higher imputed rent income. The proportion of household indirect emissions rises as income increases. Household income exhibits a stronger relationship with indirect carbon emissions than with direct carbon emissions. These findings suggest an important avenue for reducing the carbon footprint of high-income households: promoting energy-saving measures and encouraging the use of low-carbon footprint goods and services. Examples include those produced with recycled materials or low-carbon energy sources.