The Lilliputians of Environmental Regulation

Review of Policy Research

2018

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Although discussions about environmental policy often focus on the federal level of decision making and action in the United States, implementation occurs predominately at the state level. The individuals largely responsible for implementation are the state regulators and members of the regulated community as they constitute the front lines in environmental regulation. Much of the existing research on regulatory interactions investigates the regulatory enforcement styles of regulators and the compliance motivations of firms. It is equally important to consider the perceptions and actual experiences of regulated community members. To examine this perspective, this exploratory study utilizes a mail survey to investigate the perceptions and experiences of members of the regulated community in Montana. The survey respondents report positive and cooperative interactions with environmental regulators. This survey provides much‐needed insight into the perspectives of some members of the regulated community, challenging traditional viewpoints that the regulated community is hostile toward regulation, and promotes adversarial relationships with regulators. Accordingly, this research encourages debate about the fundamental assumptions surrounding the interactions of regulators and the regulated community in U.S. environmental policy.

Section: The Front Lines Of Environmental Regulationmentioning

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“…This is an accepted definition used by scholars that study environmental regulations more broadly (cf. Pautz & Rinfret, ).…”

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See 2 more Smart Citations

On the Front Lines of Implementing Environmental Regulation: The Perspective of the Regulated Community in Montana

Review of Policy Research

2018

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“… Here, we present the exploratory work that has provided the foundation for a project that explores survey data from more than a dozen states (see Pautz and Rinfret, ).…”

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confidence: 99%

Attitudes and perspectives of frontline workers in environmental policy: a case study of Ohio's Environmental Protection Agency and Wisconsin's Department of Natural Resources

Journal of Public Affairs

2012

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This research is an effort to focus on frontline regulators with the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency and Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources. An online survey was conducted of frontline regulators in these agencies to explore their knowledge, attitudes, and perspectives on policy implementation. More specifically, we endeavor to answer how frontline workers implement environmental policy. To analyze these data, we use two categorizations of factors (knowledge and attitudes, and contextual factors) offered by May and Winter (2009) to examine what influences the decision making of frontline regulators in their regulatory interactions. We find that despite common presumptions of adversarialism in the environmental regulatory arena, the frontline environmental inspectors in these states generally have positive attitudes of their regulatory colleagues and cope well with external contextual factors. While our findings are exploratory and descriptive, we argue that they are important for the next generation of environmental policy in the USA.

State environmental regulators: perspectives about trust with their regulatory counterparts

Journal of Public Affairs

2014

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Although numerous studies explore the regulatory enforcement styles of regulators and the regulated community's compliance motivations, existing research does not provide adequate insight into regulatory interactions themselves. We use data from a nationwide survey of more than 1200 state environmental regulators to empirically assess the role of trust in regulatory interactions. We find statistical support of trust in these regulatory interactions and find that trust appears to be a function of cooperative behavior, information sharing, respect, perceptions of motivations, and proactive assistance seeking. These findings could support the increasing calls for a fundamental restructuring of environmental regulation in favor of a next-generation approach to environmental policy that calls for more collaborative working relationships between regulators and their regulatory counterparts.