How Voluntary Environmental Programs Reduce Pollution

• Author: William McGuire,Phi Cong Hoang,Aseem Prakash
• Published date: 01 July 2018
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/puar.12832
• Date: 01 July 2018

How Voluntary Environmental Programs Reduce Pollution 537

Public Administration Review,

Vol. 78, Iss. 4, pp. 537–544. © 2017 by

The American Society for Public Administration.

DOI: 10.1111/puar.12832.

Aseem Prakash is professor of political

science, Walker Family Professor in the

College of Arts and Sciences, and founding

director of the Center for Environmental

Politics at the University of Washington,

Seattle.

E-mail: aseem@uw.edu

William McGuire is assistant

professor of economics at the University of

Washington Tacoma.

E-mail: wmcguire@uw.edu

Phi Cong Hoang is a graduate student

in the Terry College of Business at the

University of Georgia.

E-mail: phihoang@uga.edu

Abstract: This article investigates the mechanisms that voluntary environmental program (VEP) participants adopt

to reduce pollution. The focus of this article is the 33/50 program, a VEP introduced by the U.S. Environmental

Protection Agency in 1991 and discontinued in 1995. The program called for emissions reductions for 17 chemicals

reported to the Toxics Release Inventory. Using a sample of approximately 12,000 plants, the relationship between 33/50

program participation and adoption of pollution reduction practices is studied for three time periods, 1991–1995

(program life), 1996–2004, and 2005–2013. These practices include source reduction activities (SRAs) and recycling,

recovery, and treatment (RRTs). The major findings are that during the program ’ s life, 33/50 participants showed

increased adoption of SRAs and RRTs for both targeted and nontargeted chemicals. However, once the program ended,

higher adoption rates persisted for RRTs only, with a shift in emphasis toward treatment over recycling and recovery.

Evidence for Practice

• Voluntary environmental programs (VEPs) such as the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency ’ s 33/50

program can increase the adoption of both ex post and ex ante pollution reduction measures.

• VEPs such as the 33/50 program can have “legacy” effects, producing sustained increases in the adoption of

ex post pollution reduction measures even after the program has ended.

• Outcome-focused VEPs such as the 33/50 program can have a “crowding out” effect, leading participants to

focus on less desirable pollution reduction processes.

William McGuire

University of Washington Tacoma

Phi Cong Hoang

University of Georgia

Aseem Prakash

University of Washington, Seattle

How Voluntary Environmental

Programs Reduce Pollution

G overnmental regulations along with voluntary

environmental programs (VEPs) seek to

persuade firms to reduce pollution. Firms can

achieve that environmental objective in several ways.

Broadly, they can undertake ex ante interventions

that ensure that less pollution is produced during

their value addition processes. Alternatively, they

can invest in ex post (end of pipeline) measures that

recycle, recover, or treat waste so that it does not

enter the pollution stream. In what ways might VEPs

incentivize specific pathways to pollution reduction?

VEPs encourage firms to voluntarily commit

to environmental policies that are beyond the

requirements of law. Scholars have debated why firms

join VEPs and whether VEPs motivate participants

to reduce pollution (King and Lenox 2000 ; Lyon and

Maxwell 2007 ; McGuire 2014 ; Morgenstern and

Pizer 2007 ; Prakash and Potoski 2006 ; Rivera and

deLeon 2004 ). This article focuses on a relatively

underexplored aspect of VEPs: the mechanisms by

which VEP participants seek to reduce pollution. This

question is important because although command

and control regulations sometimes prescribe specific

pathways and technologies for regulatees (Cole and

Grossman 1999 ), VEPs tend to be less prescriptive in

this regard.

This article examines the 33/50 program, a VEP

introduced by the U.S. Environmental Protection

Agency (EPA) in 1991 and, given its experimental

nature, discontinued in 1995. The 33/50 program

targeted 17 highly toxic chemicals, a subset of the

chemicals listed under the Toxics Release Inventory

(TRI) Program. With 1988 emissions as the baseline,

33/50 program participants pledged to reduce

emissions of the targeted chemicals by 33 percent by

the end of 1992 and 50 percent by the end of 1995

(EPA 1992, 1997). The EPA used the program to

“encourage” the adoption of pollution prevention

measures and “to foster a pollution prevention ethic”

(EPA 1997). However, the EPA also made it clear that

emissions reductions achieved through any means

would count equally toward the emissions reductions

goal (Zatza and Harbour 1999 ).

Previous works have debated whether the 33/50

program successfully reduced emissions. This article

moves the discussion of VEPs forward by exploring

how such emission reductions were achieved, whether

Research Article