Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

A central challenge for environmental governance is creating policies that respond to stakeholders and improve environmental conditions. Some local governments are addressing this challenge by adopting different types of environmental sustainability policies (ICMA, 2016). These diverse policies consist voluntarily statements to reduce their environmental impacts beyond the requirements established by regulatory systems. However, what is unclear is how stakeholders motivate the adoption of different types of environmental sustainability policies.

Previous research has focused on local governments’ decisions to adopt environmental sustainability policies, broadly defined (Krause, Feiock, & Hawkins, 2016; Levesque, Bell, & Calhoun, 2017; Lubell, Feiock, & Handy, 2009; Portney, 2003; Svara, Watt, & Jang, 2013). These studies examine how the different aspects of local governments and their communities are related to the likelihood of local governments adopting any type of environmental sustainability policy. However, local governments can adopt a variety of sustainability policies that differ considerably in terms of content and objectives. As yet, we know little about which stakeholders (internal/external) are associated with local governments’ adoption of different types of sustainability policies. Some are focused more on cost-savings and efficiency (e.g., energy and water conservation policies), whereas others address broader long-term sustainability concerns (e.g., greenhouse gas emissions, citywide environmental sustainability. Still, others address both (e.g., recycling policies and green building design policies).

We suggest that internal stakeholders are more likely to pressure for policies that to appeal to popular notions of improving broader environmental sustainability (Kearney, 2011), such as a citywide environmental sustainability policy and greenhouse gas emissions policy. By contrast, external stakeholders, such as federal/state government, are more likely to pressure for policies that are efficiency-oriented and enhance energy and water conservation. Other external stakeholders, such as environmental groups, may be more likely to pressure for all typesof sustainability policies because their mission is to improve sustainability outcomes across a variety of settings. Pressures from vendors and business associations are likely to be negatively associated with local governments’ adoption of any type of environmental sustainability policies because these policies are a perceived threat to their existing routines and practices.

Drawing on a nationwide survey of directors in the US local governments, we assess how different types of stakeholders are associated with six environmental sustainability policies: (1) recycling policy, (2) green building design policy, (3) energy conservation policy, (4) water conservation policy, (5) greenhouse gas emission policy, and (6) citywide environmental sustainability policy. We use seemingly unrelated regression modeling since the adoption of one policy is likely to be correlated with another. Our findings offer evidence that environmental stakeholder pressures are associated with all types of sustainability policies. Internal stakeholders are associated with local governments’ adoption of broader sustainability policies. Finally, vendors and business associations are negatively associated with local governments’ adoption of any type of environmental sustainability policy. These findings offer a more nuanced understanding of how local governments respond to different stakeholder pressures for environmental sustainability. They provide essential insights on how these pressures relate to the adoption and eventual design of a variety sustainability policies.