Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

Voluntary programs are often lauded an environmental or social policy instrument that offers “win-win” opportunities. Defined broadly as regulatory arrangements where private firms opt into enhanced production standards, voluntary programs can benefit both participating members and the wider society in which they are embedded. Members benefit from the competitive advantage they secure from program participation, and society benefits from enhanced environmental or social conditions resulting from improved production practices. Of course, the realization of voluntary program benefits is contingent on attracting sufficient program participation to improve production externalities at meaningful levels. Understanding what motivates voluntary program participation, therefore, holds significant theoretical and practical importance.

Much of the voluntary program literature offers a simple depiction of member decision making: through cost-benefit reasoning firms determine whether the competitive payoff that is associated with program membership justifies investments required to meet program standards. In this paper, we move beyond this simple depiction to investigate the grid-group foundations of voluntary program participation. Developed in the field of anthropology, and later introduced to political science, grid-group culture theory has seen a recent surge of attention among public policy and administration scholars examining a range of phenomena, from information biases in policy making to public sector collaboration. Grid-group theory argues that the degree to which an individual is amenable to externally imposed prescriptions (referred to as grid), and values social collectives (group), drives much of his or her decision making and behavior. Seen from this perspective, voluntary program members’ motivations are shaped by individual grid-group configurations.

To examine the grid-group foundations of voluntary program member motivations we draw on farmers’ self-reported motivations for pursuing participation in the USDA’s National Organic Program. Beyond the use of unique primary survey data, the study offers both theoretical and methodological innovation in grid-group culture theory: whereas most grid-group applications measure the grid and group constructs indirectly with high/low grid and group ideal types (hierarchs, egalitarians, individualists, and fatalists) - we measure the dimensions directly. This approach allows us to characterize individuals as exhibiting relative “levels” of grid and group, and to understand voluntary program members as being distributed along spectrums of grid and group propensity.

Study findings indicate that certified organic farmers are motivated by a number of rationales for pursuing National Organic Program participation, such the pursuit of price premiums and a desire to support the organic movement. Furthermore, these motivations appear systematically undergirded by farmers’ grid-group orientations. For example, the more an individual is predisposed to a high-grid and high-group orientation, the more their decision making appears to be influenced by a desire to further a social movement cause. We discuss the implications of these findings for our understanding of voluntary program participation and ability to achieve policy goals, and the promise that dimensional grid and group conceptualization and measurement holds for grid-group culture theory.