Equitable transitions in ageing societies: how fairness perceptions transform carbon tax resistance

Carbon taxes are efficient but politically fragile, especially in ageing societies where near-term costs loom large. We study how perceived distributional fairness shapes elderly support for carbon pricing, using two waves of representative survey data from Singapore and leveraging a real-world policy change. Our findings show that perceiving the tax as fair significantly increases support among the elderly while cushioning the adverse impact of further tax hikes. Elderly respondents who view the tax as fair also prefer allocating revenues to initiatives that generate broad societal and environmental benefits such as investments in renewable energy and policies fostering a green economic transition over direct transfers to affected households. Furthermore, we find that fairness perceptions boost older adults’ willingness to contribute to climate mitigation through pension investments and charitable donations, although overall voluntary engagement fell after the increase, revealing a persistent support–pay gap. Together, our findings point to fairness-by-design: transparent, rule-based revenue recycling, targeted relief for financially vulnerable seniors, credible oversight (audits, public reporting, pre-announced rate paths), and fairness-centred communication linking near-term protections to longer-term benefits. While Singapore is a high-trust, high-governance-capacity setting, the stabilizing role of distributional fairness is likely to travel to other ageing societies, whereas acceptance of flexible spending may require tighter earmarking and external oversight in lower-trust contexts.