The Impact of Environmental Taxes on Meat Consumption in Iran

Although environmental protection laws in Iran have a long history use of new economic tools and methods such as taxes is needed to achieve sustainable development. The present study aims to investigate the effect of environmental taxes on meat consumption in Iran. In this context, we analyze the effect of tax on pollution caused by consumption of red meat and poultry meat in the consumption basket of urban and rural households. Required information including supply and demand elasticities of red meat and poultry meat and the amount of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrogen released were taken from previous studies. The results reveal significant effect of tax on meat consumption, especially red meat. Thus, the government can control the spread of pollution by taxing meat consumption, and therefore prevents the destruction of the environment and achieves the goals of sustainable development. Therefore, the use of tax instruments as an effective solution in reducing environmental pollution is important.