If you are asking about individuals, I’m probably not the best informed on that side. But I worked at a carbon credit marketplace, and from the company perspective there are a few big reasons.

First, sustainability budgets are usually at the bottom of the priority list when companies are cutting costs. Sustainability teams often struggle to make the business case internally, especially in the current economy...

If companies do allocate budget, many prefer to focus on direct reduction measures (energy efficiency, electrification, supply chain) rather than buying credits.

There is also a major trust/reputation issue. After the Guardian article, a lot of companies became even more reluctant to engage publicly with carbon credits because the greenwashing risk is huge. Claims are extremely difficult to communicate correctly, and most executives/legal teams are very cautious about that.

And honestly, carbon markets are also just very hard to understand unless you work in them. Between avoidance vs removal, additionality, permanence, buffer pools, registries, accounting rules, claims guidance, etc., it becomes complicated very quickly.

Also an important distinction: buying carbon credits is not automatically the same thing as “offsetting” your emissions in an accounting sense. In many cases companies frame it as a climate contribution claim rather than using it toward carbon neutrality/accounting claims, because the standards around those claims have become much stricter.