Collective Action through Voluntary Environmental Programs: A Club Theory Perspective

Voluntary environmental programs are institutions that seek to induce firms to produce positive environmental externalities beyond what government regulations require. Drawing on club theory, this paper outlines a theoretical perspective to study the relationship between program design and program effectiveness. Effective programs have rule structures that mitigate two central collective action problems inherent in producing positive environmental externalities: attracting firms to participate in the program and ensuring that participating firms adhere to program obligations. Because program efficacy can be undermined by collective action problems associated with free riding and shirking, effective voluntary clubs should be designed to mitigate these challenges.     

Environmental Public Voluntary Programs Reconsidered

Environmental “public voluntary programs” (PVPs) involve government offers of positive publicity and technical assistance to firms that reach certain environmental goals. A growing body of empirical work suggests these programs generally have little impact on the behavior of their participants. A natural policy conclusion would be to eliminate PVPs, but we argue that such a conclusion is premature. Many PVPs are best viewed as information diffusion programs, so identifying their effects econometrically is difficult because information is likely to diffuse to nonparticipants. Thus, after the early phases of even a successful PVP, it may well be impossible to detect a difference in the performance between participants and nonparticipants. We argue that new estimation approaches are needed to identify the effects of PVPs. We also explore the design of PVPs in detail, showing how PVPs can potentially enhance the diffusion of cost‐effective techniques for pollution abatement.     

Voluntary Environmental Programs in the Public Sector: Evaluating an Urban Water Conservation Program in California

Solving conflictual environmental policy problems is increasingly falling under the purview of local governments and public agencies. Nonregulatory approaches, such as the development of voluntary environmental programs (VEPs), could offer a useful policy alternative as they often have greater political traction and flexibility. However, there has been little work examining the use of VEPs in the public sector. This article uses a new dataset from California to examine how political institutions affect decisions by local governments and public agencies to participate in a voluntary urban water conservation program and whether this program has improved the water conservation performance of its members. The results show that special district governments, private utilities, and water suppliers dependent on purchased water are more likely to participate in the program and to join early. However, urban water agencies that have joined the program have not reduced their per capita water use more than those that have not. These results underscore the influence of political institutions in public‐sector decision making and demonstrate that, as in the private sector, commitment to a VEP by local government and public agencies does not guarantee implementation or environmental improvements. While voluntary programs offer political and administrative advantages, in order for VEPs in the public sector to be effective they must be accompanied and supported by credible enforcement mechanisms, performance standards, and rigorous monitoring programs.     

Motivations for Voluntary Environmental Management

This article examines the motivations for firms to participate in voluntary environmental programs and to adopt environmental management practices using data gathered from a survey conducted in 2005 of facilities located in Oregon operating in six industrial sectors. It is one of the first studies of voluntary environmental management to include small‐, medium‐, and large‐sized facilities as well as to include both privately and publicly owned facilities. In particular, we examine the effects of both external factors such as regulatory, consumer, and investor pressures, and internal factors such as technical and resource capacity, in influencing voluntary environmental behavior. The intent is to describe potential influences that have implications for designing and implementing private and public policies that foster effective voluntary environmental management by firms. We find that larger facilities are more likely to participate in more voluntary environmental programs, but are likely to adopt more environmental management practices only if environmental issues are of significant concern to them. Presence of an R&D department stimulates the adoption of more environmental management practices, particularly if environmental issues are of significant concern to the facility, but does not have a statistically significant impact on participation in voluntary programs. We also find that while regulatory pressures are significant in motivating participation in voluntary programs and adoption of environmental management practices, competitive pressures are only important in motivating the former. Pressure from final good consumers or from investors in publicly traded facilities is not found to have a significant influence on voluntary environmental behavior of facilities in this study.     

Being Canadian: Dual Citizenship in Historical Perspective

Why do states configure their citizenship laws in certain ways? Why do they allow or prohibit dual citizenship? Why was it only in 1946 that Canada decided to enact its first citizenship law which prohibited multiple national allegiances? Why was a similar proposal abandoned in 1931? And why was this citizenship law changed in 1977 to allow dual citizenship? A common answer is that citizenship reflects the national “identity” of each nation-state. Through a perusal of the debates regarding citizenship laws in Canada, I locate the particular motivation for introducing those laws. I argue that although the symbolic element of citizenship laws is significant, citizenship laws are enacted as a political instrument to achieve immediate and specific goals. In particular, accepting dual citizenship in Canada should be seen as a one of the strategies political elites tried in order to incorporate English and French speakers under the same flag.     

American and Canadian Environmental Federalism; A Game-Theoretic Analysis

To understand why environmental federalism is different in Canada and the United States, one might begin with the initial strategic realities that faced the Fathers of Canadian Confederation and the Framers of the Constitution of the United States. This essay examines federalism from a game-theoretic point of view, to integrate and expose the rational properties of the decision to federate and the logical entailments of that choice for environmental policy within two specific strategic contexts. Specifically, I suggest that American environmental federalism has arisen in response to the strategic reality of a Prisoner's Dilemma, while Canadian environmental federalism can be analyzed as an effort to regulate confrontations within a game of Chicken. In addition to the analysis of each federated structure, evidence from five case studies demonstrates the usefulness of games to the study of comparative federalism     

基于管理与环境视角的中国旅游效率研究

从管理和环境的角度对区域旅游产业效率进行分析,测算全要素旅游管理效率和旅游环境影响率,判断究竟是内生变量还是外生环境影响了全要素旅游效率的高低,有助于旅游资源利用方式的优化和产业管理效率的提高。本文利用四阶段DEA模型对剔除环境因素影响的我国区域旅游效率进行实证分析,研究结果表明,2005～2009年我国旅游效率水平总体偏低,旅游业发展管理都是无效的;现阶段旅游效率的提升主要是依赖外生环境的改善,管理效率的提升明显不足;区域间全要素旅游效率、全要素旅游管理效率和旅游环境影响率之间存在明显的区域差异,东部地区全要素旅游效率明显高于中部与西部地区。从提高旅游业管理水平和改善旅游业外部环境方面提出不同区域提高旅游业效率的发展对策：北京、天津、江苏等应重点改善区域旅游管理能力;河北、辽宁、新疆等应从管理和环境两个层面推进;山西、内蒙古和黑龙江等应重点优化外部环境。     

Voluntary Approaches to Environmental Problems: Exploring the Rise of Nontraditional Public Policy

Government reliance on voluntary programs represents a significant shift in public policy: moving from command and control regulations to market based mechanisms. This article explores the determinants of Voluntary Remediation Programs (VRPs) in the American States. During the 1980s and 1990s, 44 states adopted VRPs to facilitate remediation of existing hazardous waste sites. Relying on diffusion of innovation theory, I develop a model of state policy adoption that explores the influence of internal state political and economic factors, as well as testing the influence of regional and top‐down diffusion forces. I utilize a discrete‐time event history approach to test this model. The results indicate that state policymaking is responsive to interest group pressure and the pace of cleanup at hazardous waste sites. Additionally, state policymaking is consistently influenced by the actions of surrounding state governments; the probability of adopting a voluntary program increases if surrounding states have already developed these policies.     

Environmentalism in One Country: Canadian Environmental Policy in an Era of Globalization

In sharp contrast with its international reputation and self-image as a leading national advocate of environmental protection initiatives, Canada has, in the 1990s, reduced its environmental expenditures and initiatives. The most dramatic and visible retreat has been in terms of expenditures, especially at the federal level and in Ontario, the largest and most industrialized province. In addition, again especially in Ontario, following the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the provincial election of 1995, environmental protection has been explicitly and openly curtailed. Possible explanations for the decline of environmental protection in Canada include: a) the effects of globalization on a trade-oriented middle power, b) counterwaves of environmental and economic concern among the public, and c) excessive decentralization of political authority with regard to environmental protection.     

论环境史对人的存在的认识及其意义

人及其活动依然是环境史研究的主题,不过,环境史对人的存在及其活动的认识,不是排斥或远离自然而是融入或回归自然而产生的。环境史的创见主要在于更新了认识人及其活动的视角,因而突破了“人类惟一”的狭隘意识以及“精英主义”的英雄史观。环境史不仅不反人类,相反,它倡导和实践的是一种更宽泛、更真实的人道主义,因为它既关注抽象的人类,也关注具体的人群和个人,还关注与人的生存息息相关的环境。环境史作为解读人类文明的新范式,其研究将直接影响着人们对待自然和他人的态度与行为,有助于人们反思“我们应该怎样生活?我们应该为什么生活?”,以便挖掘人存在的丰富意义,从而使史学在新时代更好地发挥其社会功能。     

Paying for Environmental Protection in a Cross-national Perspective

The threat of global warming has attracted considerable attention from policy makers around the world. We analyse public support for environmental protection and the main drivers of support in Australia and cross-nationally using survey data from the International Social Survey and the Australian Survey of Social Attitudes. Support is measured as a series of trade-off questions based on willingness to pay extra taxes or prices, or accept cuts to one's standard of living to protect the environment. Willingness to pay more for environmental protection has decreased across a range of countries from 1993 to 2000 with the ‘routinisation’ of ‘the environment’ as a political issue. Risk perceptions regarding the dangers of global warming, having a tertiary education and holding post-materialist value orientations all increase the willingness to pay for environmental protection. In Australia, environmental support is still divided along partisan lines and global warming was as an important issue in the 2007 federal election.     

Rediscovering the French Canadian Diaspora: A Personal Testimony

The presence of Franco-Americans in New England is well documented. This is not the case for New York. Recently, public awareness of the French presence in Albany's Capital District was increased, an ethnic revival kindled and a mother country discovered through intergovernmental and transnational collaboration.     

The Impact of Local Environmental Advocacy Groups on City Sustainability Policies and Programs

American cities vary considerably in the degree to which they pursue sustainability. What explains this variation? One plausible cause of such differences is that sustainability may be more appealing to high‐income cities than to more economically challenged cities. Yet such strict economic determinism seems simplistic and removes politics from an inherently political process. The hypothesis here is that any such relationship between income and commitment to sustainability is conditioned by a city's level of environmental advocacy. The data utilized in this analysis are derived from two large‐scale data sources. One is a comprehensive inventory of sustainability programs and policies in 50 large American cities. The other is a set of surveys in those same 50 cities. The multivariate model supports the hypothesis. Controlling for income growth and the predisposition of policymakers to be supportive of sustainability (as well as other alternative explanations), a city's commitment to sustainability is strongly linked to the advocacy of environmental and sustainability groups in the policymaking process. The example of Sustainable Seattle is used to illustrate the linkages that would seem to underlie the statistical analysis.