Are climate change perceptions related with plastic policy support? Effects of climate change skepticism, guilt, and efficacy on the acceptance of the plastic tax

PLOS One | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0337327 December 29, 2025 25 / 30 Second, policymakers can strategically frame plastic tax initiatives to align with dominant cultural values rather than attempting to change them. Bolderdijk et al. [121] demonstrated that environmental policies framed to resonate with exist- ing public values achieve higher acceptance rates. Communication strategies can emphasize how plastic taxes support specific value orientations—highlighting environmental protection for those with strong environmentalism values or eco- nomic efficiency for those with materialist values. Future research and limitations Future research should extend this framework across multiple domains. Testing our integrated model with other environ- mental policies would establish generalizability beyond plastic taxation. Cross-cultural validation is essential, as cultural values significantly influence environmental policy acceptance [17]. Experimental designs could establish causal relation- ships through field experiments manipulating risk communication messages or laboratory studies varying guilt induction. Longitudinal designs tracking attitude changes over policy implementation periods would reveal dynamic relationships between values, perceptions, and support [122]. Investigating policy sequencing effects would inform strategic policy implementation, addressing spillover effects in environmental behavior change [123]. This study has several important limitations. Our cross-sectional design precludes causal inferences about relation-

ships between psychological factors and policy support. Self-reported measures may suffer from social desirability bias, particularly regarding environmental attitudes [124]. The single-country Korean context limits generalizability across cultural and political systems. Brief scales (2–3 items) may inadequately capture complex constructs like guilt and efficacy, and we measured behavioral intentions rather than actual tax-paying behavior, creating potential intention-behavior gaps [122]. A significant limitation is our failure to measure participants’ political ideology and party affiliation. Since plastic taxation represents environmental policy with political implications, political orientations likely substantially influence support attitudes. Research demonstrates that political ideology strongly predicts environmental policy acceptance, with conservatives showing greater skepticism toward climate policies than liberals [102]. Political partisanship also affects how individuals process envi- ronmental information, potentially moderating relationships between psychological factors and policy support [24]. This study’s Korean cultural context significantly limits generalizability. Environmental values and policy preferences vary substantially across cultures [125]. Korean collectivistic values and hierarchical social structures may influence plastic tax acceptance differently than individualistic Western contexts [126]. Our findings specifically reflect Korean envi-

ronmental attitudes shaped by rapid industrialization experiences and Confucian value systems emphasizing collective responsibility [65]. Cross-cultural validation is essential before generalizing results to other contexts, particularly given documented cultural variations in environmental concern and policy support [17]. Finally, the relationships identified represent associations rather than causal effects, given our cross-sectional correla- tional design. Future research should employ causal research designs to test the directional relationships proposed in our theoretical framework. Supporting information S1 Appendix. (PDF) Author contributions Conceptualization: Seoyong Kim. Data curation: Seoyong Kim. Formal analysis: Miri Kim. Investigation: Miri Kim.