Subjective social status and willingness to pay for green taxes

Carbon pricing and green taxes are considered the most effective fiscal tools in combating climate change from a neoclassical economic perspective. However, increasing global protests have shown that the societal acceptance of these policies is deeply tied to individuals' perceptions of fairness and equity, rather than rational cost–benefit analyses. The current literature tends to explain tax resistance primarily through low-income levels or a lack of environmental knowledge. The main objective of this study is to analyse tax resistance not merely as a problem of economic constraint, but through the lens of relative deprivation felt by individuals regarding their position in the social hierarchy and the breach of the social contract between them and the state. The study argues, as a theoretically motivated interpretation rather than a directly tested claim, that individuals who feel left behind in terms of social status may be more likely to frame green taxes not as an environmental protection policy, but as an unfair imposition by the system. The study uses the 2020 Environment IV module of the International Social Research Program. The dependent variable is individuals' Willingness to Pay. The main independent variable is Subjective Social Status (SSS), an indicator that measures where an individual positions themselves on the social hierarchy. The Ordered Probit Model was chosen as the analysis method due to the ordinal nature of the dependent variable. In the model; to clearly isolate the effect on WTP, variables such as income, education, gender, environmental concern, and political orientation and institutional trust were controlled.