Voluntary Environmental Programs: Are Carrots without Sticks Enough?

In recent years industry representatives, policymakers, and scholars have argued that "command-and-control" regulations, although relatively effective, are costly policy instruments for promoting environmental protection. Accordingly, voluntary environmental programs (VEPs), generally understood as self-regulatory agreements that seek to promote enhanced corporate environmental protection, have been offered as efficient, flexible, and effective alternatives to traditional regulatory structures (Steelman & Rivera, 2006). VEPs' apparent win-win characteristics have made these initiatives very popular, particularly among industries and some regu- lators, in developed countries and most recently in emerging market economies. For example, in the United States over two hundred VEPs have been established by government agencies with more than 13 thousand participants in programs such as Green Lights, 33/50, or Performance Track (Steelman & Rivera, 2006). At the inter- national level, ISO 14001, a VEP established by the nongovernmental International Organization for Standardization, had in 2004 more than 66 thousand participants in over one hundred countries (Delmans & Montiel, 2008). Voluntary environmental programs come in many forms and structures from strictly voluntary initiatives with no required standards, no reporting, and no over- sight to certification programs with specific performance-based requirements and periodic third-party audits. Voluntary programs also vary in terms of their industry and country focus, and their unilateral or joint sponsorship by government agencies, industry, and/or environmental groups. This second installment of the Policy Studies Journal's (PSJ) Symposium on Voluntary Environmental Programs includes four papers advancing this literature by moving beyond the typical approach that focuses on studying single VEPs usually in the context of the United States. Instead, these papers contribute by either examining multiple voluntary programs or focusing on initiatives implemented outside the United States, in countries such Canada, Mexico, and India. The basic research questions examined remain the same as those addressed in the initial group of papers published as part of this symposium on the previous issues of PSJ: (i) Under what conditions can VEPs effectively promote superior corporate environmental