| Abstrakt: |
The government has many strategies it can use in an attempt to influence what people buy and consume, including the imposition of excise taxes on undesirable products. However, excise taxes on products seen as highly personal and individualized, such as food and drinks, are highly contentious, and consent for such taxes is difficult to obtain. Using concepts from New Fiscal Sociology, this paper considers the relationship between consumption patterns and consent for an excise tax on junk food. Rationality would dictate that those consumers who eat junk food should be anti-tax because they will bear the brunt of the increased cost, and those who avoid junk food should be ambivalent because it doesn't affect them either way. Semi-structured interviews with over 77 adult consumers revealed that the level of consent for a junk food tax was inversely related to the amount of junk food consumed, with the people who eat the least amount of junk food the most vehemently in favor of the tax. In addition, three main categories of junk food consumers emerged, with varying degrees of alignment between what they said about food and what they actually ate. How people create their own definitions for what they consider to be junk food, and how they understand their own patterns of consumption, informs broader questions of the relationship between taxpayers and the state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
