New Tools for Environmental Protection Education, Information, and Voluntary Measures (2002) / Chapter Skim
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Pages 337-348
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From page 337... ...
This suggests a powerful rationale for communication and diffusion instruments that emphasize education and information to support voluntary action. Yet in many cases, perhaps most, the effects of federal government information and education programs appear so far to have been rather modest (see Lutzenhiser, this volume, Chapter 3; Schultz, this volume, Chapter 4; Th0gersen, this volume, Chapter 5; Stern, this volume, Chapter 12~.
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Why (or why not) increase government support for education and information programs for individuals and households and for voluntary programs for firms and industries in support of environmental management?
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Green Lights program respond to this public need by not only ensuring citizen awareness, but also by accelerating it and by helping to close gaps between awareness and appropriate action (see Valente and Schuster, this volume, Chapter 6~. Third, education, information, and voluntary programs are believed to increase the efficiency of consumers' and producers' responses to economic and other signals of the need to change behavior to reduce environmental costs.
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Voluntary programs decentralize decision making, which has potential benefits, but they also put the decisions in the hands of actors whose objectives differ from the regulator' s goal of providing public goods like environmental quality (see Prakash, this volume, Chapter 18~. Randall (this volume, Chapter 19)
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"Information programs" can cover a wide spectrum of government actions, including regulatory initiatives and financial incentives that "send signals" for particular actions and thus have an information function, but the focus of this volume is on information and education as communication and diffusion instruments that are distinct from regulatory actions or financial inducements. In this more limited connection, the central predicament is that a particular government information program becomes one of a great many tiny tributaries feeding a virtual flood of information engulfing those citizens who are the intended audiences, like adding just one more ingredient to a complex "information soup" (Mileti and Peek, this volume, Chapter 7~.
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Education and information programs are likely to be more effective if they incorporate an assortment of approaches: repeating and reinforcing the flow of information and telling people where they can get additional information; linking with other information and education efforts; paying attention to forces that might encourage partnerships; and in some cases, considering different mechanisms for different stages in the education and information process. For example, mass media approaches may be more effective in early stages, and interpersonal communication in later stages (Valente and Schuster, this volume, Chapter 6~.
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The problem is that in many cases, the detailed design stage is undermined by limitations on what even the nation's top experts know. CONSIDERING HOW TO CARRY OUT EFFECTIVE VOLUNTARY PROGRAMS FOR THE PRIVATE SECTOR The central policy question about voluntary measures is whether environmental objectives can be achieved more effectively or more cost-effectively if direct regulation is reduced in favor of policy instruments that enhance the power of market pressure, investor influence, public concern, reputation, and the like to press firms toward better environmental performance.
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We mention three interesting mechanisms involving voluntary action as illustrative. One is the notion that information about the environmental performance of publicly traded firms may change their behavior through the influence of "green" investors (Herb
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The experts themselves need to know a lot more in order to be as helpful as the government needs, given the imperative of using taxpayers' money and government regulatory authority effectively and responsibly to aid voluntary decision making. Most of what still needs to be learned, however, is not specific to governmental environmental education and information programs.
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· How can effects of the information technology revolution be harnessed in support of government education and information programs? Clearly, the world is being transformed rapidly through the tools available to facilitate communication.
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For example, authors in this volume argue that voluntary measures in industries work best under the threat of regulation; that they depend on good information in the form of monitoring data on environmental performance; that they benefit from market forces that favor "green" performance; and that their success depends on whether an industry has agents (such as trade associations) to diffuse best practices.
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From page 348... ...
348 NEW TOOLS FOR ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION REFERENCES Andrews, R.N.L. 1998 Environmental regulation and business "self-regulation." Policy Sciences 31:177-197.
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