Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

Since the 1992 Rio Earth Summit, local governments worldwide have developed a suite of sustainability programs to induce individuals and organizations to collectively improve the environmental conditions within their jurisdictions. However, as their prevalence has increased, so too have questions about their policy efficacy. Critics suggest that local governments face collective action problems in which they can enjoy the benefits of appearing to address environmental issues without necessarily investing the effort to improve the environment. These more symbolic sustainability strategies are often developed in reaction to external stakeholder pressures, and offer evidence that the decentralized collective approach to environmental protection lacks merit.

Despite these suggestions, as yet, we have little empirical understanding of environmental impact of local sustainability programs. Moreover, existing literature has not considered how this impact is related to program design in that some local governments are more likely to design programs that are comprehensive in addressing a broad array of environmental issues using a diverse set of policy instruments, whereas others are more likely design their programs less comprehensively. This variation is likely related to differences in their environmental performance.

We address these issues by considering how the design of 102 county governments’ individual sustainability programs relates to their collective improvement of ozone quality between 2003 and 2013. After controlling for the spillover effects of ozone quality among neighboring counties, we offer the evidence that local sustainability programs are related with improved environmental conditions. More specifically, local governments that develop more comprehensive sustainability programs are more likely to improve their ozone quality. These findings reinforce the notion that while global environmental problems require action at all government levels, a decentralized environmental protection approach offers some promise for improving collective environmental conditions. This notion is particularly salient given the lack of strong national and international environmental regulatory regimes.