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art
Understanding Voluntary Measures
Thomas Dietz
Several important lessons about voluntary arrangements involving the pri-
vate sector emerge from the previous chapters. First, it is clear that far
more attention must be paid to evaluation of voluntary efforts. This task
will be facilitated by the longstanding tradition of evaluation research in the
social sciences. Second, voluntary agreements present fundamental challenges
to social theory, and a better understanding of them will require more integrative
concepts of organizational behavior than are currently available. In particular,
understanding voluntary agreements will require tentative solutions to the aggre-
gation problem of linking the behavior of individuals to that of organizations.
Third, voluntary agreements may provide important opportunities for meeting
new environmental policy challenges, but for the most part, the voluntary agree-
ments in place today are dealing with problems of the sort that traditionally have
been handled by command-and-control regulation. Some creative institutional
design will be required to engage voluntary agreements as tools for dealing with
as yet uncontrolled forms of pollution, such as that from nonpoint sources. Fi-
nally, more attention must be paid to the comparative analysis of voluntary agree-
ments. Although it can be difficult to generalize across political economies and
cultures, other industrial nations are engaged in interesting experiments with
voluntary agreements, and much could be learned from this experience.) Further-
more, some of the most important voluntary agreements, such as the International
Standards Organization (IS O) environmental protocols, are international in char-
acter. In this chapter, I will try to address each of these lessons, suggesting
where research must move in the future if we are to have the knowledge base
necessary to support innovative environmental policy.
319
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UNDERSTANDING VOLUNTARY MEASURES
POLICY EXPERIMENTS AND EVALUATION RESEARCH
As Mazurek (this volume, Chapter 13), Nash (this volume, Chapter 14), and
especially Harrison (this volume, Chapter 16) note, the initial claims of success
for some innovative voluntary agreements should be viewed with skepticism.
When care is taken to learn what changes in environmental impact can legiti-
mately be attributed to a voluntary program rather than to other factors, the
estimated effects may be less impressive than those contained in first reports that
are less rigorous in methodology. Thus in developing and assessing the merits
of voluntary agreements in the future, it would be wise to think carefully about
methodological and conceptual issues of evaluation.
Environmental policy evaluation is still in its infancy. The amount of re-
search in the peer-reviewed literature is still small, though some evaluations also
are found in the "gray" literature of internal agency documents and consulting
reports. A major effort is underway to assess the effectiveness of international
environmental treaties (Young, 2001). But if systematic evaluation is a new
issue for voluntary agreements and other environmental programs, evaluation
has been routine practice for many social programs.2 A great deal can be learned
from this experience that will enhance our understanding of all environmental
programs, especially programs involving the private sector.
Avoiding Hubris
More than thirty years ago, Campbell (1969) argued that nearly all policies
and programs should be considered experiments. Clearly environmental policies
are social experiments. We never have enough information about the particular
circumstances of implementation nor a complete enough set of models and theo-
ry to predict with great accuracy the outcomes of an innovation. As a result, we
would be wise to treat changes in policy as opportunities to learn rather than
assuming we know the outcomes in advance. We need informed humility, not
hubris, in approaching new policies and programs. Informed humility requires
that we build into the design of a policy evaluation research that can inform us
about what has happened and why. In that way we will build a cumulative
knowledge base that will allow better designed reforms in the future. This same
general point has been made in the context of adaptive ecosystem management
and social learning (Gunderson et al., 1995). Our knowledge is imperfect, things
change, and the only wise way to proceed is one that is reflexive, allowing for
trial, analysis, and revision. Our reflexivity can be improved greatly if attention
is paid to evaluation while a program is being designed rather than attempting to
construct an evaluation after crucial design decisions have been made and oppor-
tunities to collect baseline data have been lost.
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32
Estimating Program Effects Is Difficult
Only rarely in social or environmental programs can we conduct true exper-
iments with random assignment of subjects (individuals, communities, or firms)
to treatment and control groups. Such assignment typically would be cumber-
some and perhaps illegal and/or unethical. In the absence of such an experimen-
tal design, it can be difficult or impossible to attribute causal influence to a
program because many other factors also are influencing the behavior of interest.
A substantial part of the literature on evaluation research deals with the prob-
lem of assessing causality and estimating true program effects in the absence of an
experimental design. Researchers refer to "quasi-experiments" in which there is
some variation in who participated and did not participate in programs, but there is
not random assignment to experimental and control groups of the sort that facili-
tates strong causal inference.3 As Harrison notes (this volume, Chapter 16), selec-
tion bias can be a particular problem firms who join voluntary programs may be
very different from those who do not. Appropriate statistical models can help in
dealing with selection bias, but such bias is still a major issue in most evaluations
of voluntary agreements (Heckman, 1976, 1979~. Although it may not always be
possible to implement the ideal design, or even have sufficient data for the best
possible statistical analysis, careful attention to the factors that interfere with esti-
mating true program effects can help in avoiding gross errors and allow for proper
caveats in reporting the estimates that are possible.
Nor is the design question a purely statistical matter. Policy and normative
considerations enter into determining the proper basis for making a comparison.
The design of evaluation research must address the issue of what constitutes a
"fair" comparison to use as a basis for judging the success or failure of a volun-
tary program. The overall success of a voluntary agreement in reducing environ-
mental impact needs to consider growth in the amount of production and con-
sumption activity that can be attributed to an industry. A seemingly successful
voluntary agreement could reduce impact per unit consumption or production
even as overall impact increases as a result of growing population, affluence, and
consumption per unit affluence.
Evaluations should consider the improvement in environmental performance
that is likely to have occurred over time without any intervention. Evaluations
should also consider the reasonable upper bound of improvement set by factors
such as the rate of replacement of capital equipment. They also should attend to
possible tradeoffs in impacts for example, a reduction in emissions of a target-
ed pollutant, at the cost of an increase in emissions of one not targeted. Integrat-
ed measures of environmental impact, such as the "ecological footprint," may be
useful in assessing changes in overall impact (Rees and Wackernagel, 1994;
Rees, 1992; Wackernagel and Rees, 1996; Wackernagel et al., 1999~. Early
evaluations that did not consider these factors were perhaps too generous in their
assessments. In the future we can anticipate an important debate about what
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UNDERSTANDING VOLUNTARY MEASURES
comparison standards are appropriate. Some of that debate is foreshadowed in
the chapters of this section, where the issue of what to measure in evaluating
voluntary programs is discussed.
Thinking About Program Goals
The most obvious goal of voluntary agreements is to reduce environmental
impact. But in evaluating voluntary programs, the obvious goal may not be
obtained quickly or directly. As Herb and colleagues (this volume, Chapter 15),
Harrison (this volume, Chapter 16), Furger (this volume, Chapter 17), and Prakash
(this volume, Chapter 18) emphasize (see also Dietz and Stern, this volume,
Chapter 1), a benefit of voluntary agreements may be a general change in organi-
zational culture among participating firms that in turn leads to environmental
protection receiving a much higher priority than otherwise would be the case.
Changes in culture that reduce environmental impact may act more slowly than
the implementation of new command-and-control regulations. But such cultural
changes have large and broad effects in the long run. The implication for pro-
gram evaluation is that there may be program outcomes that are worth monitor-
ing in addition to short-term reductions in pollutant generation or resources used.
Of course, measuring and evaluating such alternative or interim goals should
not be a substitute for assessing success or failure with regard to the primary
goal reduction in environmental impact. Indeed, one of the standard criticisms
of voluntary agreements is that they produce good feelings, good publicity, in-
creased awareness, and little if any change in environmental impact. In some
circumstances it may be appropriate to design programs whose goal is to change
organizational culture in order to provide the substrate for changes that reduce
impact. If that is the goal, the program should be clear about what will and will
not be achieved. It also may be useful to assess interim goals such as changes in
organizational culture, establishment of environmental accounting systems, and
so forth because they may be good indicators that a voluntary agreement is on
the way to producing the desired environmental benefits. Interim indicators that
are known to be good predictors of environmental outcomes may be useful as
evaluation tools and as secondary program goals.4
Of course, even when a voluntary agreement program does not reduce envi-
ronmental impact over what might be achieved by command-and-control regula-
tion, it may be able to achieve the same change in impact with lower costs. Such
savings can prevent increases in consumer prices that might be associated with
environmental protection, provide both more funds for further investment in
environmental quality, and reduce future resistance to addressing environmental
problems. From the viewpoint of society as a whole, these spinoffs of cost-
effective environmental regulation are beneficial. So one criterion for evaluat-
ing voluntary agreements is not just their overall environmental impact, but the
cost per unit of pollution reduction.
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323
The possible importance of secondary and interim goals such as changed
organizational culture and practices leads us to the distinction between summa-
tive and formative evaluation. Summative evaluation looks at the overall suc-
cess or failure of a program with regard to its most important goals. It provides
information intended to influence decisions about expanding or contracting or
even eliminating the program based on what has been achieved. In contrast,
formative evaluation is intended to provide guidance to program administrators
and participants while the program is in process. The goal is to suggest mid-
course corrections. Formative evaluation usually focuses more on program pro-
cess and interim indicators of progress than on ultimate outcomes. It intends to
provide advice rather than a judgment. Developing successful voluntary agree-
ments will require both formative and summative evaluation. Participants and
managers can benefit from research that helps them do better, but policymakers
and society as a whole must be able to assess how well a voluntary agreement
approach is working in a given domain.
To the extent that voluntary agreements are intended to produce changes in
organizational culture and routines, it may be necessary to rethink not only the
variables that should be considered as outcome criteria, but also the statistics used
to summarize the behavior of participants in a program or agreement. The mean
and its analogs (conventional regression analysis, analysis of variance, and other
versions of the general linear model) are appropriate if the intent of an evaluation
is to focus on the sum of benefits to society. This follows because the mean times
the size of the population is the sum of a variable across all members of the
population. Thus analyses focused on the mean give a sense of the total benefits
from a program. But in some circumstances, such as when a program is consid-
ered a demonstration to point the way toward best practices, it may make more
sense to focus on the tails of the distribution of organizational performance. Those
firms that have done exceptional jobs in reducing environmental impact and those
that have made the least progress may provide more information than firms whose
performance under the program is "typical" (at the center of the distribution). The
methods available for statistical analysis of "outliers" are not as well developed as
that for understanding the center of a distribution, but increases in computational
power are making more tools available for such analyses.5 A particularly helpful
evaluation design might include a summative evaluation using procedures based
on the mean performance to assess the overall effectiveness of a program with an
analysis of the outliers. The outliers then could become the subject of case studies
to determine why those organizations have done so well or so poorly compared
with typical performance a formative evaluation goal.
WHY PARTICIPATE?
The problem of altruism versus self-interest has been one of the most vital
themes in the social sciences over the last quarter of the twentieth century and is
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UNDERSTANDING VOLUNTARY MEASURES
central to any analysis of voluntary agreements.6 As Harrison (this volume, Chap-
ter 16), Furger (this volume, Chapter 17), Prakash (this volume, Chapter 18), and
Randall (this volume, Chapter 19) detail, the interplay between altruism and self-
interest is also central to the motivations for participating in voluntary agree-
ments. Given a voluntary agreement, profit-maximizing firms have substantial
incentive to "free-ride" by signing on to the agreement, but not taking any costly
steps to reduce environmental impact. Such free-riders receive most of the ben-
efits of the agreement good public image, freedom from intrusive regulation-
without bearing the costs. If many firms follow this narrowly rational strategy
little reduction in environmental impact will occur. As Olson (1965) noted more
than 35 years ago, there will be an undersupply of public goods, in this case
environmental protection, compared to what would be optimal.
Although the free-rider model is compelling in its logic, decades of research
also have shown that it is not always a realistic model of human behavior. Codes
of silence are observed by prisoners, commons are managed sustainably, and
people make sacrifices for the collective goody In the case at hand, firms some-
times change their behavior as a result of participation in voluntary agreements
even when they could free-ride. To design better voluntary agreement programs,
we need a better understanding of why firms act so as to reduce environmental
impacts. Achieving that understanding will require careful theoretical and meth-
odological investigations of the behavior of organizations. Although research on
participation in voluntary agreements is in its early stages, several key issues
already have emerged.
Voluntary Participation Is Not Wholly Voluntary
As Randall (this volume, Chapter 19) and Nash (this volume, Chapter 14)
emphasize, when a voluntary agreement is developed for a serious environmen-
tal problem, the threat of command-and-control regulation often is on the hori-
zon. Participation in the voluntary agreement may be the result of comparing the
costs and benefits of the agreement requirements with those that would flow
from a regulation that can be anticipated if the voluntary agreement is not suc-
cessfully implemented. Even when the threat of government regulation is not
present, other firms who are customers may require products that meet environ-
mental requirements. As Rejeski and Salzman note (this volume, Chapter 2),
some corporate buyers dwarf their suppliers and can bring about substantial
changes in products and production processes.
Nor are corporate customers the only source of pressure. Even the largest
retail firms may fear boycotts motivated by environmental concern, while, as
Nash notes, environmentally friendly products may allow for niche markets that
are advantageous to those who produce them. Finally, it is increasingly common
for environmental standards, such as those incorporated in ISO 14001, to influ-
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325
ence access to export markets.8 Firms that hope to penetrate markets where such
standards have substantial sway will act to meet the requirements and may alter
products and production processes beyond what is required in their other markets
simply because such uniformity is simpler. So voluntary action may be "co-
erced" by concern with future government regulation, or by concern with present
or anticipated actions by either corporate customers or consumers. A number of
studies document such effects on firms' environmental policies (Henriques and
Sadorsky, 1996; Nakamura et al., 2001~.
Voluntary action may also be induced by regulatory or other environmental
policy tools. As Herb and colleagues note (this volume, Chapter 15), one out-
come claimed for the U.S. Toxics Release Inventory, a regulatory program re-
quiring only the production of information, is voluntary efforts by firms to re-
duce their output of listed pollutants. "Green" labeling programs (see Th0gersen,
this volume, Chapter 5), whether developed by government or nongovernment
groups, can provide a similar stimulus for voluntary action. Such possibilities
for synergism between voluntary measures and other policy instruments are im-
portant considerations for both program design and evaluation.
Networks Matter
At least since C. Wright Mills's The Power Elite it has been clear that major
corporations typically do not make decisions in isolation from one another, even
though direct collusion is prohibited by U.S. law.9 Trade or industry associa-
tions may be especially important links in these networks, as Furger (this vol-
ume, Chapter 17) and Nash (this volume, Chapter 14) note. To some extent,
their influence comes through acting as the representatives of a business sector
in policy debates.~° In that role, they may convey information about future
government regulations that may encourage preemptive voluntary action. But
they may also play a role of sharing information across firms, mediating and
encouraging voluntary action.
Linkages across firms that do business with each other also can be very
consequential. Such transactions, even when governed by contracts, require
trust, a point noted by Furger and Nash. Trust may be damaged not only by
actions that directly affect the interests of a firm, but also by observing that a
trading partner exhibits public behavior that is out of line with industry norms.
Like any other social actor, firms often compare their performance to that of
their peers and those with whom they have frequent contact, and modify their
behavior to conform to the norm, or even to be perceived as a leader and an
innovator. Thus effective participations in voluntary agreements may be encour-
aged by other members of a firm's network directly and may be rewarded by a
good reputation within the network. Conversely, free-riding may bring informal
sanctions from trade associations and other firms.
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UNDERSTANDING VOLUNTARY MEASURES
Individuals Matter
Decisions within firms are made by individuals who bring their personal
beliefs, values, and norms to bear as well as the corporate interests. At least
since Galbraith (1967), there has been debate about the degree to which manag-
ers have autonomy from stockholders in steering the corporation. As noted in
this volume, Chapter 1, many senior corporate managers are members of cohorts
that have been exposed to environmental arguments since college or before.
Nakamura et al. (2001) and Henriques and Sadorsky (1996) have found that the
environmental concerns of corporate managers influence at least some aspects of
firms' decisions.
Protecting the Environment May Protect the Bottom Line
Analyses from industrial ecology often argue that much environmental impact
generated by the production process is a result of poor design and represents wasted
resources (Socolow et al., 1994~. Better engineering could both reduce environmen-
tal impact and save money. If these views are internalized by a firm, then voluntary
agreements become a mechanism for receiving public approval for implementing
reduced impact, finding flexibility within government regulations to innovate, and
sharing information with peer firms, while the core motivation remains cost reduc-
tion. Andrews (1994) suggests that adoption of industrial ecology strategies by firms
can be greatly facilitated by voluntary agreements. We agree, but suggest that the
reverse also may be true that the insights from industrial ecological analysis may
be a major motivation to participate in voluntary agreements.
Organizational Structure Matters
Standard models from microeconomics begin with the assumption that the
firm is a unitary entity that makes decisions to maximize profits or some other
measure of economic performance. If this is the case, then explaining why firms
would participate in voluntary agreements reduces to explaining how voluntary
agreements might enhance economic performance. This is the essence of the
rational actor model that underpins the analysis in several of the preceding chap-
ters. But at least since Simon (1947), the assumption that organizations, includ-
ing private-sector firms, can be seen as purely rational utility maximizers has
been dubious.
Two problems can be raised about the rational utility maximizer view of the
firm. One is the assumption that organizations act to maximize profits. Other
decision rules may be more plausible. The second, related problem is viewing
the organization as a unified decision making entity, whatever the decision rule
applied might be. i2 Who makes decisions is, of course, related to the problem of
what criteria are used in making decisions. If Galbraith is correct in suggesting
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327
that in modern corporations managers have considerable independence from
stockholders, then executives may be free to pursue goals they consider desirable,
perhaps for ethical or career reasons, without strict adherence to profit maximi-
zation. Nakamura et al. (2001) contrast models of profit maximization with
those of utility maximization that take into account managers' preferences and
concerns, and find that both are relevant to the environmental protection deci-
sions of Japanese firms. DeCanio & Watkins (1998) found that patterns of stock
ownership had some influence on decisions to participate in the U.S. Environ-
mental Protection Agency' s (EPA' s) Green Lights energy conservation program.
NEW TOOLS FOR OLD PROBLEMS
As the literature reviewed in previous chapters makes clear, voluntary agree-
ments are being used primarily to deal with environmental problems that previ-
ously have been addressed with either command-and-control regulation or with
market-based strategies. In the United States, experimental programs are at-
tempting to reduce the emission of targeted pollutants and increase energy effi-
ciency of the private sector. To date, there seems to be little experience with
using voluntary agreements to deal with nonpoint pollutants or with the special
problems of the service sector noted by Rejeski and Salzman (this volume, Chap-
ter 2~. The exception seems to be with ISO 14001 and other "green" labeling
and certification efforts that are encouraged by consumer demand for environ-
mentally friendly products, demands from large purchasers on their suppliers, or
demands of import regulations in important markets. Although targeted at man-
ufacturers, some of these have the potential of reducing nonpoint sources when
products used by consumers are a source of environmental problems.
One of the central problems in dealing with nonpoint sources is that they are
often composed of many tiny point sources. Households, small firms, or local
governments may generate pollution almost inadvertently as a result of routine
activities. Those carrying out these activities often have little awareness of the
environmental consequences and little control over these impacts. The impacts
may be embedded in the products or processes used, and the users may have
little time, money, or technical capacity to develop for themselves or find in the
market lower impact alternative products or practices. Thus policies targeting
manufacturers and suppliers may be an appropriate strategy for dealing with
nonpoint sources. Voluntary agreements may be an effective tool in changing
the behavior of these corporate actors as an indirect way of addressing the non-
point sources.
ATTENDING TO THE GLOBAL
Most work in this volume has focused on the U.S. experience. As noted at
the beginning of Part Three, this is appropriate as a first step in developing an
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UNDERSTANDING VOLUNTARY MEASURES
understanding of education, information, and voluntary measures that is useful
for U.S. decision makers. But a continued neglect of experiences outside the
United States would unnecessarily and inappropriately limit understanding of
New Tools, for two reasons.
First, although there are many obstacles to generalizing across political and
economic institutions and cultures, it is just such comparisons that clarify what is
general and what is unique. Comparative analyses can lend substantial analyti-
cal power to research on voluntary agreements. As many industrialized nations
experiment with new forms of policy, it will become even more important to
understand what approaches may transfer to the U.S. context, what approaches
will not work, and why. In addition, as consumption and production increase in
nations that still are only beginning to evolve their environmental policy sys-
tems, comparative analyses are essential to provide useful guidance about the
best ways to approach the challenges they will face. For example, approaches
that are found effective in the U.S. context may not work well in a country with
a different regulatory context or where a target industry has a different structure.~3
Second, we must recognize that environmental policy is now inherently
international. This holds for at least two reasons. First, a large portion of the
firms regulated in any one nation will have trade with and often have production
facilities in other nations and so must deal with a web of national regulations.
As a result, voluntary agreements nearly always will operate in the context of
multiple national laws and regulations. Second, a growing fraction of national
environmental laws and regulations are developed as a result of participation in
international regulatory regimes.~4 Randall's point (this volume, Chapter 19)
that firms may act in anticipation of regulation can apply to expected internation-
al treaties as well as to uniquely national policies. So voluntary agreements are
acting not just in the context of multiple national regulations and multiple na-
tional markets for products and supplies, but also in the context of global envi-
ronmental treaties and the national laws and regulations that respond to them.
CONCLUSIONS
Voluntary agreements may have substantial potential to reduce the environ-
mental impacts of production and consumption activities both directly and by
changing organizational culture and capabilities. But as the chapters in Part 3
demonstrate, voluntary agreements come in many forms, and we do not under-
stand many of them very well. In the worst case, it is not clear what changes in
environmental impact have flowed from the voluntary agreements that have been
implemented, in part because of limits in the design of the existing evaluations
and in part because we have few evaluations of the less tangible impacts of
voluntary agreements such as organizational changes. The participation of firms
in voluntary agreements, including the effective implementation of environmen-
tal policies and procedures, depends on many factors that require further investi-
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329
gation. Some factors are intraorganizational: organizational structure and lines
of control, culture and routines, available expertise, and available capital. Others
depend on external factors: existing and anticipated regulations, the structure of
the firm's industry, and the perceived interests and strategies of suppliers, cus-
tomers, and competitors. To understand voluntary agreements, to evaluate their
impacts, and especially to offer guidance on the design of future programs, sub-
stantial efforts at conceptualization, modeling, and empirical analysis are essen-
tial. The chapters here review the first efforts along these lines and point toward
future research, but it is clear that the interest in voluntary agreements has run
well ahead of our understanding of them.
Even less well researched is the potential of voluntary agreements to deal
with the sources of environmental impacts that flow from nonpoint sources. In
addition, we are only beginning to think through the implications of international
environmental regulatory regimes for national and international voluntary agree-
ments. It is almost certain that voluntary agreements will be an important part of
environmental policy over the next decade. What is less certain is the benefits
that will flow from them and the best strategies for developing and implementing
them.
NOTES
1 Analyses of the international experience are beginning to appear (tenBrink, 2002).
2 One of the first efforts to apply program evaluation methods to an environmental policy is
Poppitti and Dietz (1983). In examining the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, we were
surprised by how little evaluation research was available on environmental programs. This has been
less true of energy and water conservation programs, where there is a long history of evaluation
research using both experimental and quasi-experimental designs. See, for example, Dietz and Vine
(1982), Kowalczyk et al. (1983), Harris and Blumstein (1984), Stern et al. (1986), and Vine and
Crawley (1991).
3 The classic Campbell and Stanley (1963) volume documents the threats to valid causal infer-
ence in various research designs. Cook and Campbell (1979) update this discussion, while Achen
(1986) discusses statistical issues in the analysis of quasi-experiments. Issues of evaluation research
design also are discussed in the ecological literature (Manly, 2001: Chapter 6; Underwood, 1997).
4 This suggests that an important goal of research should be developing an understanding of the
effects of organizational change on the environmental performance of firms.
5 Examples of methods for modeling the "spread" of a distribution include those described by
Gould (1992, 1997). "Extreme values" or the tails of a distribution are of interest in many applica-
tions of statistics to environmental problems, where methods are steadily improving (Manly, 2001).
6 Axelrod (1997) considers the altruism problem the "Eshrecia coli" of the social sciences,
while Dietz et al. (2002) refer to it as the "Drosophila melanogaster." Whichever analogy to biology
is chosen, the argument remains the same: The problem of altruism, posed as Prisoner's Dilemma,
the Tragedy of the Commons, or the Logic of Collective Action, presents a marvelous test bed for the
theory and methods of the social sciences.
7 In addition to empirical studies of altruism, formal models of cultural evolution and of repeat-
ed Prisoner's Dilemma games give analytical insights as to why cooperation may not be as rare as
earlier, simpler models suggested (Boyd and Richerson, 1985; Richerson and Boyd, in press; Richer-
son et al., 2002; Sober and Wilson, 1998).
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UNDERSTANDING VOLUNTARY MEASURES
8 ISO 14001 does not regulate production or products per se, but simply requires that environ-
mental management systems are in place.
9 Such prohibitions differ radically across nations. For example, in Japan the keiretsu corpo-
rate groups are an important part of the national economic structure, and many firms have links
through banks that hold large portions of their stock equity (Aoki, 1988). However, Nakamura et al.
(2001) found that these links have little impact on firms' participation in the ISO 14001 certification
process.
10 Laumann and Knoke (1987) and Dietz and Rycroft (1987) show that professional and trade
associations are important participants in the energy and environmental risk policy networks.
11 In a series of papers, Wernick, Ausubel, and their collaborators document the reductions in
environmental impact that have been achieved in a number of industries and suggest that better
engineering could substantially alleviate environmental problems (Ausubel, 1996; Wernick, 1997;
Wernick, 1994; Wernick et al., 2000). Mol and Sonnenfeld (2000) present arguments that this is a
general trend, driven by societal concerns with the environment rather than just cost reduction. The
literature on the environmental Kuznets curve makes a similar argument increased affluence leads
to reduced environmental impact per unit affluence (see Nordstrom and Vaughan, 1999, for a
review). York et al., (2001) and Roberts and Grimes (1996) present skeptical views of the trend
toward reduced environmental impact. At best, such reductions may occur with regard to local
impacts, but there is little evidence of such a dynamic for global impacts such as greenhouse gas
emissions. Voluntary agreements have been directed at both local and global pollutants.
12 For example, organizational ecologists in sociology do not necessarily assume strict profit
maximization, but do treat organizations as unified wholes with regard to their strategies (Hannan
and Freeman, 1989). This view is critiqued in McLaughlin (1996).
13 Because of possible differences among industries in their likelihood of developing effective
voluntary agreements such as those noted by Nash (this volume, Chapter 14) and Furger (this vol-
ume, Chapter 17), it is important that comparative research be conducted both across countries and
across industries.
14 These agreements are themselves voluntary agreements in that there is no mechanism to
impose them on individual states. In addition to the importance of studying voluntary agreements in
the context of international treaties on the environment, it seems likely that the literature on volun-
tary agreements and that on international regulatory regimes might provide theoretical and method-
ological guidance to each other.
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Achen, C.H.
1986 The Statistical Analysis of Quasi-Experiments. Berkeley: University of California.
Andrews, C.
1994 Policies to encourage clean technology. In Industrial Ecology and Global Change, R.
Socolow, C. Andrews, F. Berkhout, and V. Thomas, eds. Cambridge, Eng.: Cambridge
University Press.
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Representative terms from entire chapter:
voluntary measures
