This study aims to expand the understanding of public acceptance of carbon taxes by exploring the role of habits. Habits play a pivotal role in guiding our behaviors and reasoning and can even influence our self perception and identity but remain an underexplored variable in relation to public policy acceptance. We employed a large scale (N > 5200) national survey to measure public acceptance of higher carbon taxation in Sweden, also capturing car driving habits, car usage, and other relevant variables. The findings show that habit strength is negatively correlated with policy acceptance, regardless of self reported driving distance, while also appearing to moderate the relationship between policy acceptance and environmental concern and political leaning, variables previously shown to be of relevance. The study suggests that the influence of habits needs to be recognized to better understand the formation of climate policy acceptance, and exploring this perspective paves the way for future research.

Using Sweden as a study case, this article explores the polarized opinions to wind and nuclear energy, two low carbon energy options that have been shown to be politically controversial. In a wide-scale survey (N = 5200), general attitudes to wind and nuclear energy are captured, as well as to projects in the proximity of people's homes. The study demonstrates a deep polarization of energy preferences in Sweden, finding strong associations between worldviews, political orientation, environmental concern, and support for or resistance to wind and nuclear energy. The study concludes that support for both energy options is reduced when wind or nuclear power is constructed near people's home, but also suggests that the proximity effect is particularly strong for individuals with strong TAN (traditional, authoritarian, nationalistic) values and right leaning political ideology. The article argues that politically motivated reasoning might explain the polarization of attitudes, yet this effect seems to become less relevant when people are asked to judge potential energy infrastructure located close them.

In urban studies, ‘presentism’ – the prioritisation of present-day concerns at the expense of historical and future considerations – has emerged as a critical bias that is rarely challenged, either through governance structures, institutional frameworks and urban planning and design, or as the ethical basis for our communities and social relations. From the vantage of the historical social sciences, we problematise applications of presentism within the context of urban development and planning, arguing that a presentist bias in contemporary approaches to urban studies risks suppressing detailed understandings of how legacies of the past condition options in the present and narrow considerations of the future. In this introductory editorial, we introduce the scope of the special issue on ‘Long-Term Intergenerational Perspectives on Urban Sustainability Transitions’ and its eight contributing articles. Through reflecting on and contextualising the eight articles, we argue that historical and archaeological approaches to time can help promote better intergenerational outcomes. Linking to a transdisciplinary discourse on temporality in urban decision-making, we put forward the theory of ‘temporal neutrality’ as a boundary object that can help integrate and focus thinking on temporality and intergenerational trade-offs in urban planning. We draw upon research on environmental justice, ethics and humanities to advocate and articulate considerations of intergenerational neutrality in urban studies.

Two key goals for sustainable spatial planning are to promote low-carbon travel in daily life and to enhance human wellbeing through diverse human-environment interactions. Yet, the integration of these goals has been underexplored. This study investigates the potential for experiential diversity via active travel in different residential contexts within the Gävle city-region, Sweden. Over 15 months, we collected spatiotemporal data from 165 participants, analyzing 4,362 reported experiences and 13,192 GPS-derived travel trajectories. Our analysis uncovered a significant spatial discrepancy: while the travelled distances to locations of positive experiences typically ranged from 1.5 km to 5 km, active travel predominated only within 1.5 km. This discrepancy persisted across urban, suburban, and peripheral contexts. Although residents in different contexts reported the same types of experiences, urban dwellers travelled about 50 % farther for nature experiences compared with other positive experiences, whereas peripheral dwellers travelled twice the distance for urbanicity experiences compared with other positive experiences. Consequently, urban residents mostly relied on active travel for urbanicity experiences and motorised travel for nature experiences, with the reverse trend observed among peripheral dwellers. These results illustrate the importance of spatial scale for promoting diverse positive experiences via active travel, regardless of residential context. Effective planning strategies may include enhancing environmental diversity near homes and developing infrastructure that favours active over motorised travel for short to moderate distances.

The concept of social sustainability has long been a subject of discussion within academic literature and practitioners. However, there remains a lack of clarity in its definition and scholars argue that this can impacting the legitimacy of addressing social sustainability challenges. Through a systematic literature review and a content analysis, we shed light on the multifaceted discourse surrounding the concept of social sustainability, elucidating its diverse applications and meanings portrayed and defined within scholarly discourse. Our findings show that the concept predominantly revolves around four prevalent categories: “Equity,” “Well-being,” “Participation and Influence,” and ‘Social Capital. Based on results, we develop and present a novel analytical framework of the four pillars of social sustainability, referred to as the “SoSuCompass,” representing a conceptual framework to clarify the concept's multifaceted nature. The framework can serve as a tool for a fuller comprehension of the definition of social sustainability.

This paper explores wind power attitudes in Sweden, considering the proximity of wind power installations, using a large-scale survey (N = 5280). The study examines if attitudes were affected by policies that provide collective financial benefits through municipal tax revenues, personal benefits through direct compensation, or openings for democratic involvement. Only 15 % of the respondents expressed negative attitudes to wind power as a measure to speed up the transition to a fossil free society, while 26 % were negative to wind power built within 5 km from their homes. Attitudes were mainly predicted by ideological standpoints, environmental concern and political and governmental trust. The study found that for wind power constructed in the home municipality, respondents preferred collectively distributed financial benefits, while direct personal compensation offers the best prospects to influence ideologically motivated attitudes. None of the policy interventions tested in this study had any significant effect on respondents with strongly negative views.

Svenskarna oroas av klimatförändringen och vill tidigare lägga det svenska klimatmålet samt se ökade satsningar på ett fossilfritt samhälle. Omställningen ses som en utmaning men än mer som en möjlighet. Lägre bränslepriser står inte högt i kurs. Det framgår av en ny stor undersökning med över 5000 personer, gjord av forskningsprogrammet Fairtrans.

Carbon taxes are considered to be an efficient method to reduce greenhouse gas emissions; however, such taxes are generally unpopular, partly because they are seen as unfair. To explore if public acceptance of a stricter carbon tax in Sweden can be enhanced, this study investigates the effectiveness of three different policy designs, addressing collective and personal distributional consequences and promoting procedural aspects (democratic influence). A large-scale (n = 5200) survey is applied, combining a traditional multi-category answer format with a binary choice format. The results show that support for higher carbon taxation can be enhanced if tax revenues are redistributed to affected groups. Policies with collective justice framings can change the attitudes of individuals who express antagonistic attitudes to increased carbon taxation and influence groups comparably more affected by carbon taxes, such as rural residents, low-income groups, and people who are driving long distances. Policy designs addressing collective distributional consequences are, however, less effective on individuals expressing right-leaning ideological views and low environmental concern. Policies addressing personal distributional outcomes, or perceptions of procedural injustice, had no significant effect on policy acceptance. 

The climate crisis demands an energy transition away from fossil fuels, and for the transport sector, this implies finding more electric or hydrogen-fuelled solutions. An emerging disruptive solution with high potential for improved sustainability is using drones as a mode of transport, i.e., Advanced Air Mobility for passenger and freight transport in urban and rural areas,fuelled by electricity or green hydrogen. As drones are being rapidly commercialized, there is a need for a policy framework for local and regional actors to address this in decision-making. This paper aims to develop a policy framework through a systematic literature review where findings have been validated by experts from industry and appropriate governance bodies. The results reveal three conceptual elements in the Advanced Air Mobility system where policy actions are needed: 1) primary technology, including vehicle-related aspects; 2) functionality, including infrastructure and operations; and 3) adoption, including the environment, market, and society. The overall lack of a multi-level governance model for Advanced Air Mobility and the scarcity of knowledge of the topic within vital fields such as energy systems and regional planning are also addressed. The findings are discussed in light of regulatory frameworks for drone transportation in Europe. The paper concludes with a policy development framework for regional Advanced Air Mobility deployment and provides policy implications.