Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

Voluntary environmental programs (VEPs) are policy instruments that aim to generate positive environmental externalities by inducing participants’ voluntary compliance beyond legal requirements. While a significant large body of work has examined the use of VEPs by private firms and facilities, very little research has examined their use in the public sector. In this paper, we first examine the motivation for cities to participate in sustainability certifications or rating programs to address sustainability issues. Then, we evaluate the perceived external and internal benefits to the city from participation. Prior research suggests three motivations behind organizations’ decisions to adopt VEPs: (1) public recognition, (2) external pressures, and (3) value of knowledge transferred from VEPs. We examine if these motivations hold true in the decision making of cities on whether to join VEPs by studying the experiences of five U.S. cities’ participation in two particular programs: (1) ISO 14001:2004 Environmental Management Systems, a common VEP choice for private-sector entities, and (2) STAR Community Rating System—a recently-emerged U.S.-based sustainability rating program that consists of city-level goals and objectives for sustainability. These two contrasting programs allow the authors to analyze cities’ motivations to join VEPs in different contexts and to help identify the VEP characteristics that especially appeal to cities.

Data was collected from semi-structured interviews with employees from city governments, federal and regional agencies, and several urban sustainability-related VEPs. Although the scope of the interviews was not limited to the following five cities, this analysis primarily focuses on the experiences of Denver, CO, and Dallas, TX, which have participated in ISO 14001, and Baltimore, MD, Raleigh, NC, and Cambridge, MA, which have participated in STAR. Different from the large number of extant studies that quantitatively evaluate the determinants and effects of VEP participation, this analysis reveals the qualitative mechanisms of how cities are motivated to join in a program and how they perceive the effects of VEP participation.

The results indicate strong evidence that cities’ participation in sustainability certifications or rating programs are, as previous literature suggests, largely motivated by public recognition. City governments are also found to highly value the knowledge transferred from the ISO 14001 and STAR programs, although the findings also reveal the existence of alternative knowledge-gathering mechanisms from which cities can obtain information regarding local sustainability planning. The analysis also supports the hypothesis that cities’ participation in sustainability certifications or rating programs is sometimes driven by external stress, such as regulatory pressures and peer competition. While there is no evidence indicating participation in ISO 14001 and STAR improves citywide environmental performance, city governments report gaining internal benefits, including capacity building and increased morale, from the participation process. This research highlights the non-environmental benefits of VEPs that potentially strengthen city governments’ capacity and institutions for addressing complex sustainability issues at the local level.