New Tools for Environmental Protection Education, Information, and Voluntary Measures (2002) / Chapter Skim
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18. Factors in Firms and Industries Affecting the Outcomes of Voluntary Measures
18. Factors in Firms and Industries Affecting the Outcomes of Voluntary Measures
Pages 303-310
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From page 303... ...
, nongovernment groups (World Wildlife Fund's Forest Stewardship Council program) , industry associations (American Chemistry Council's Responsible Care program)
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Firms demand voluntary measures because, compared to command-and-control regulations, they get greater operational flexibility in designing and implementing their policies (National Academy of Public Administration, 1995; Majumdar and Marcus, 2001~.2 Voluntary measures that encourage firms to adopt stringent pollution standards also may increase profits inasmuch as pollution represents resource waste (Hart, 1995; Porter and van der Linde, 1995; for a critique, see Walley and Whitehead, 1994~. For example, in the Green Lights program (now merged into the Energy Star program)
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From page 305... ...
These groups fear that the processes of establishing voluntary codes are not adequately inclusive and transparent; this is a major concern if such measures replace or dilute traditional policy instruments whose development followed APA procedural guidelines. Voluntary measures also may lack teeth: To monitor compliance, they often involve self-audits by regulatees, not external audits by credible third or fourth parties.4 Furthermore, by making laws and policy processes less adversarial, voluntary policies may lessen the recourse to the judicial setting, the arena of choice of environmental groups who view it as relatively "liberal" and certainly not "captured" by the industry (Vogel, 1995~.
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From page 306... ...
Many voluntary measures can be conceptualized as club goods whose reputational benefits are nonrival and potentially excludable, and it is difficult to price their discrete units. From a firm's perspectives, voluntary policies create excludable benefits (reduce resource waste, shape regulations and so on)
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From page 307... ...
This can be done at two levels: first, their adoption rates, given that firms are not obliged by law to join them, and second, how they influence firms' environmental performance.6 The first dimension was discussed earlier in terms of demand and supply aspects and how these affect adoption rates. In operationalizing the second dimension, it is important to assess codes' impact in relation to alternatives that is, to compare environmental performance crosssectionally (adopters versus nonadopters)
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From page 308... ...
3 The corollary then is that sponsors of voluntary programs should focus on recruiting the "big fish" that have extensive forward and backward linkages. Taking advantage of market power enjoyed by such actors, their market power exercised through the value chain networks (that are increasingly becoming the defining features of cross-border economic flows)
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From page 309... ...
Hamilton, R.W. 1978 The role of non-governmental standards in the development of mandatory federal stan dards affecting safety or health.
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From page 310... ...
van der Linde 1995 Toward a new conception of the environment-competitiveness relationship. Journal of Prakash, A
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