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Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons™

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Selected Works

Environmental Policy

2015

Articles 1 - 13 of 13

Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

Regulation And Business Behavior, Neil Gunningham, Robert Kagan Dec 2015

Regulation And Business Behavior, Neil Gunningham, Robert Kagan

Robert Kagan

Presents an introduction to various articles and issues discussed in the April 1, 2005 issue of the journal "Law and Policy."

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General Deterrence And Corporate Environmental Behavior, Dorothy Thornton, Neil Gunningham, Robert Kagan Dec 2015

General Deterrence And Corporate Environmental Behavior, Dorothy Thornton, Neil Gunningham, Robert Kagan

Robert Kagan

This research addresses the assumption that“general deterrence” is an important key to enhanced compliance with regulatory laws. Through a survey of 233 firms in several industries in the United States, we sought to answer the following questions: (1) When severe legal penalties are imposed against a violator of environmental laws, do other companies in the same industry actually learn about such“signal cases”? (2) Does knowing about“signal cases” change firms’ compliance-related behavior? It was found that only 42 percent of respondents could identify the“signal case,” but 89 percent could identify some enforcement actions against other firms, and 63 percent of firms …

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Motivating Management: Corporate Compliance In Environmental Protection, Neil Gunningham, Dorothy Thornton, Robert Kagan Dec 2015

Motivating Management: Corporate Compliance In Environmental Protection, Neil Gunningham, Dorothy Thornton, Robert Kagan

Robert Kagan

Based on interviews with facility managers in the electroplating and chemical industries, this study examines regulated firms’ perceptions of how various instrumental, normative, and social factors motivated their firms’ environmental actions. We found that“implicit general deterrence” (the overall effect of sustained inspection and enforcement activity) was far more important than either specific or general deterrence, and that deterrence in any form was of far greater concern to small and medium-sized enterprises than it was to large ones. Most reputation-sensitive firms in the environmentally sensitive chemical industry chose to go substantially beyond compliance for reasons that related to risk management and …

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What Economics Teaches Us About Environmental Protection, Chad J. Mcguire Jan 2015

What Economics Teaches Us About Environmental Protection, Chad J. Mcguire

Chad J McGuire

A basic premise in economics is that companies should pay all of the costs that are incurred in the process of producing their goods and services. The reason? By incurring all of the costs in production, the price charged by the company will reflect those costs. The price consumers pay, then, will also reflect all of the costs incurred in production. This leads to price efficiency, a major goal in free-market economic principles.
Unfortunately we don’t always include the costs to the environment in the production process. Take, for example, electricity generation, which can be accomplished using different inputs. Coal-burning …

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Preparing For Disaster: How Our Voting Sends The Wrong Message, Chad J. Mcguire Jan 2015

Preparing For Disaster: How Our Voting Sends The Wrong Message, Chad J. Mcguire

Chad J McGuire

I would like to propose that we, the voting public, bear an important respon- sibility when it comes to our role in providing for the public good. Evi- dence is clear that in our system of government, elected officials are recep- tive to how we vote. If we choose to understand and prioritize the benefits of preparing for disaster, it is likely our elected offi- cials will follow our lead. But if we fail to realize the benefits of preparing, then it is more likely politi- cians will respond to those signals, throwing money at a problem that is not …

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Market Failures And Protecting The Environment, Chad J. Mcguire Jan 2015

Market Failures And Protecting The Environment, Chad J. Mcguire

Chad J McGuire

Whether you agree with government intervention, or with the specific form of gov- ernment intervention applied, it is a fact that government becomes involved in environ- mental issues because, to date, we have failed to fully inter- nalize the costs of our actions toward the environment in our market systems. So this is why government becomes involved in the first place, to correct existing and recurring market failures. Knowing this important fact helps us better understand, and judge, envi- ronmental laws and policies.

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Rising Sea Levels Challenge Flood Insurance Management, Chad J. Mcguire Jan 2015

Rising Sea Levels Challenge Flood Insurance Management, Chad J. Mcguire

Chad J McGuire

Our climate is changing. And the trend of this climate change shows the earth is, on average, getting warmer. We in New England emerged from a very cold winter in 2014 making it hard for us to see (and thus believe) the earth is getting warmer. But this is the trick of cli- mate change: The pattern of overall warming is hard to see on a day-to-day basis. We tend to judge our climate through experiencing our local weather patterns: When the weather is cold like it has been in our region over the past winter, it is hard for …

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Valuing Ecosystem Services In Coastal Management Policy: Looking Beyond The Here And Now, Chad J. Mcguire Dec 2014

Valuing Ecosystem Services In Coastal Management Policy: Looking Beyond The Here And Now, Chad J. Mcguire

Chad J McGuire

This article explores how the identification and account- ing of ecosystem services can aid coastal management policies, particularly as management looks to a future that includes the impacts of climate change. At the core of making better deci- sions is an understanding of the value of ecosystem services. The economic context of ecosystem services is explored in order to outline what may be considered a complete account- ing of costs. Once contextualized, ecosystem services will then be applied to current coastal management issues associ- ated with sea level rise. In particular, policy-relevant questions about mitigating and adapting to sea level …

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The Role Of Risk Perception In Building Sustainable Policy Instruments: A Case Study Of Public Coastal Flood Insurance In The Usa, Chad J. Mcguire Dec 2014

The Role Of Risk Perception In Building Sustainable Policy Instruments: A Case Study Of Public Coastal Flood Insurance In The Usa, Chad J. Mcguire

Chad J McGuire

Public planning for sustainability implies a forward-looking approach that often includes imagining future harm and taking steps to prevent that future harm before it occurs. A major challenge to implementing such forward looking, or precautionary, a policy instrument is managing the impacts such policies have on existing expectations. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the role of risk perception in the development of forward-looking policy instruments. A case study example focused on coastal flood insurance in the USA is presented to highlight the difficulty of implementing sustainable policy goals when current policies incentivise the discounting of risk. The …

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Trade-Facilitated Technology Spillovers In Energy Productivity Convergence Processes Across Eu Countries, Kathy Baylis, Peter Mulder Dec 2014

Trade-Facilitated Technology Spillovers In Energy Productivity Convergence Processes Across Eu Countries, Kathy Baylis, Peter Mulder

Kathy Baylis

This empirical paper tests for trade-facilitated spillovers in the convergence of energy productivity across 16 European Union (EU) countries from 1995 to 2005. One might anticipate that by inducing specialization, trade limits the potential for convergence in energy productivity. Conversely, by inducing competition and knowledge diffusion, trade may spur sectors to greater energy productivity. Unlike most previous work on convergence, we explain productivity dynamics from cross-country interactions at a detailed sector level and apply a spatial panel data approach to explicitly account for trade-flow related spatial effects in the convergence analysis. Our study confirms the existence of convergence in manufacturing …

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How Effective Are Biodiversity Conservation Payments In Mexico?, Sebastien Costedoat, Esteve Corbera, Driss Ezzine De Blas, Jordi Honey-Roses, Kathy Baylis, Miguel Angel Catillo-Santiago Dec 2014

How Effective Are Biodiversity Conservation Payments In Mexico?, Sebastien Costedoat, Esteve Corbera, Driss Ezzine De Blas, Jordi Honey-Roses, Kathy Baylis, Miguel Angel Catillo-Santiago

Kathy Baylis

We assess the additional forest cover protected by 13 communities located in the Lacandon rainforest, Mexico, as a result of the economic incentives received through the country's national program of payments for biodiversity conservation. We use spatially explicit data at the intra-community level to define a credible counterfactual of conservation outcomes. We use covariate-matching specifications associated with spatially explicit variables and difference-in-difference estimators to determine the treatment effect. We estimate that the additional conservation represents between 12 and 14.7 percent of forest area enrolled in the program in comparison to control areas. Despite this high degree of additionality, we also …

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Mainstreaming Impact Evaluation In Nature Conservation, Kathy Baylis, Jordi Honey-Roses, Jan Boerner, Esteve Corbera, Driss Ezzine-De-Blas, Paul Ferraro, Renaud Lapeyre, Martin Persson, Alex Pfaff, Sven Wunder Dec 2014

Mainstreaming Impact Evaluation In Nature Conservation, Kathy Baylis, Jordi Honey-Roses, Jan Boerner, Esteve Corbera, Driss Ezzine-De-Blas, Paul Ferraro, Renaud Lapeyre, Martin Persson, Alex Pfaff, Sven Wunder

Kathy Baylis

An important part of conservation practice is the empirical evaluation of program and policy impacts. Understanding why conservation programs succeed or fail is essential for designing cost-effective initiatives and for improving the livelihoods of natural resource users. The evidence we seek can be generated with modern impact evaluation designs. Such designs measure causal effects of specific interventions by comparing outcomes with the interventions to outcomes in credible counterfactual scenarios. Good designs also identify the conditions under which the causal effect arises. Despite a critical need for empirical evidence, conservation science has been slow to adopt these impact evaluation designs. We …

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Evaluating Heterogeneous Conservation Effects Of Forest Protection In Indonesia, Payal Shah, Kathy Baylis Dec 2014

Evaluating Heterogeneous Conservation Effects Of Forest Protection In Indonesia, Payal Shah, Kathy Baylis

Kathy Baylis

Establishing legal protection for forest areas is the most common policy used to limit forest loss. This article evaluates the effectiveness of Indonesian forest protected areas introduced between 2000 and 2012. Specifically, we explore how the effectiveness of these parks varies over space. Protected areas have mixed success in preserving forest, and it is important for conservationists to understand where they work and where they do not. Observed differences in the estimated treatment effect of protection may be driven by several factors. Indonesia is particularly diverse, with the landscape, forest and forest threats varying greatly from region to region, and …

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