Citizen preferences on private-public co-regulation in environmental governance: Evidence from Switzerland

Kolcava, Dennis; Rudolph, Lukas; Bernauer, Thomas

doi:10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2021.102226

Cited by 19 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 70 publications

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“…Hence, the findings cast doubt on policy designs that focus on mandating transparency since this approach might be insufficient to motivate firms to deepen their environmental commitments. Instead, the results suggest that substantial sustainability progress needs to be achieved via the 'monitoring' and 'regulatory threat' pillars of environmental governance (Kolcava et al 2021a). In concrete terms, policymakers might have to rely more on ambitious targets/deadlines paired with provisions to introduce top-down rules for business conduct if private-sector-led governance fails to achieve these targets.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 98%

Greenwashing and public demand for government regulation

Kolcava

2022

J. Pub. Pol.

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Environmental governance in many high-income democracies relies to some extent on self-regulation by the private sector. Yet, this policy mode is contested and proponents of top-down government regulation argue that voluntary corporate sustainability commitments remain shallow and rarely are more than greenwashing. I assess to what extent firms’ business conduct is subject to societal checks and balances, in particular, whether public support for regulation constitutes a control mechanism of corporate contributions to environmental goods. I rely on an original survey experiment (N = 2112) conducted with a representative sample of the Swiss voting population. The analysis shows that accusing firms of greenwashing reduces both citizens’ perceived effectiveness of self-regulation and perceived synergy of corporate profits and environmental protection. However, this attitudinal shift only translates into modest updates in respondents’ policy preferences. As a result, short-run shifts in public support for regulation are an unlikely societal control mechanism of business conduct.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 98%

Greenwashing and public demand for government regulation

Kolcava

2022

J. Pub. Pol.

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“…To remediate the above and provide renewed impetus for more sustainable forms of crop protection [81], reinvented institutional settings, paired with a re-routing of (public and private) funding streams, may be valuable. These ideally should be coupled with enabling policies to achieve farm-level transformations at scale [82], public-private coregulation [83], and institutional arrangements that nurture (cross-scale) interdisciplinary cooperation and collective action. Thus, reformed institutions, amended scientific trajectories, and modified incentive or reward structures can put pest management science more firmly on the systems track.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Institutional Context of Pest Management Science in the Global South

Wyckhuys,

Hadi

2023

Plants

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The natural sciences are receiving increasing attention in the Global South. This timely development may help mitigate global change and quicken an envisioned food system transformation. Yet in order to resolve complex issues such as agrochemical pollution, science ideally proceeds along suitable trajectories within appropriate institutional contexts. Here, we employ a systematic literature review to map the nature of inquiry and institutional context of pest management science in 65 low- and middle-income countries published from 2010 to 2020. Despite large inter-country variability, any given country generates an average of 5.9 publications per annum (range 0–45.9) and individual nations such as Brazil, Kenya, Benin, Vietnam, and Turkey engage extensively in regional cooperation. International development partners are prominent scientific actors in West Africa but are commonly outpaced by national institutions and foreign academia in other regions. Transnational institutions such as the CGIAR represent a 1.4-fold higher share of studies on host plant resistance but lag in public interest science disciplines such as biological control. Despite high levels of scientific abstraction, research conducted jointly with development partners shows real yet marginal improvements in incorporating the multiple (social–ecological) layers of the farming system. Added emphasis on integrative system-level approaches and agroecological or biodiversity-driven measures can extend the reach of science to unlock transformative change.

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“…Thanks to the increasing development of information technology, public participation in environmental governance are now unprecedented and convenient. The public's concern about environmental issues will help decision-makers carry out environmental governance [34]. There is an excellent interactive relationship between public participation and government governance, which plays a positive role in environmental governance [35].…”

Section: Environmental Performance Of Public Participationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Does Public Participation Reduce Regional Carbon Emissions? A Quasi-Natural Experiment from Environmental Information Disclosure in China

Yang¹,

Zhang²,

Wu³

2023

Pol. J. Environ. Stud.

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Informal environmental regulation, represented by public participation, has an increasingly significant role in environmental governance. This paper utilizes panel data of 285 cities in China from 2003 to 2017. It examines the difference-in-differences (DID) and instrumental variable method (IV) to investigate the causal effect of public participation represented by Environmental Non-Governmental Organizations(ENGOs) on regional carbon emissions. The empirical results show that public participation reduces regional carbon emissions, which still holds after a series of endogeneity and robustness tests. This paper proves an inverted U-shaped nonlinear relationship between the intensity of public participation and regional carbon emissions. Furthermore, this paper demonstrates that regional green technology innovation and strengthening formal environmental regulations are the primary mechanisms for public involvement in promoting regional carbon emission reduction. Finally, this paper discusses the heterogeneity governance effect among cities and finds that the governance effect of the sample is more pronounced in eastern cities, non-resource-based cities, large cities, and provincial capitals. The results reveal the importance of public participation in regional carbon emission reduction and provide an empirical basis for promoting informal environmental regulation.

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Citizen preferences on private-public co-regulation in environmental governance: Evidence from Switzerland

Cited by 19 publications

References 70 publications

Greenwashing and public demand for government regulation

Greenwashing and public demand for government regulation

Institutional Context of Pest Management Science in the Global South

Does Public Participation Reduce Regional Carbon Emissions? A Quasi-Natural Experiment from Environmental Information Disclosure in China

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