Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

Compliance mechanisms in the public policy literature are conceived as either active or passive ((McCubbins and Schwartz 1984) or a function of contract type (Van Slyke 2007). The decision about which compliance mechanism to use is a function of the ability to observe compliance behavior and the degree to which process or outcome measures are more important for monitoring and reporting purposes in the organization. When governments use procurement to reduce the environmental footprint of the organization (i.e., “green purchasing”), what compliance mechanisms are used? This empirical research article develops a set of hypotheses from the existing compliance literature and uses data from a 2016 U.S. local government survey to identify what mechanisms are used to ensure compliance with the stated goals of green purchasing requirements. The results inform ongoing debates in the literature about the effectiveness of compliance monitoring mechanisms and their consistency between the stated goals of sustainable procurement policies and their implementation.