Grantee Research Project Results
2004 Progress Report: Oregon Business Decisions for Environmental Performance
EPA Grant Number: R831034Title: Oregon Business Decisions for Environmental Performance
Investigators: Ervin, David E. , Khanna, Madhu , Wu, Junjie , Koss, Patricia
Institution: Portland State University , University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign , Oregon State University
Current Institution: Portland State University , Oregon State University , University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
EPA Project Officer: Hahn, Intaek
Project Period: June 1, 2003 through May 31, 2006 (Extended to May 31, 2007)
Project Period Covered by this Report: June 1, 2003 through May 31, 2004
Project Amount: $251,973
RFA: Corporate Environmental Behavior: Examining the Effectiveness of Government Interventions and Voluntary Initiatives (2002) RFA Text | Recipients Lists
Research Category: Environmental Justice
Objective:
The objectives of this research project are to: (1) collect primary data on the environmental practices of a random sample of Oregon firms; (2) identify and measure the major environmental performance indicators, such as toxic releases, water pollutant emissions, and solid waste levels for Oregon firms; (3) collect data on firm, industry, regulatory, and “voluntary” environmental program (VEP) factors hypothesized to influence business environmental performance; (4) test the influences of firm, industry, and regulatory conditions, simultaneously with VEP factors, on the use of environmental policies and practices; (5) test the influences of firm, industry, regulatory, and VEP factors on firms’ environmental performance; and (6) infer the VEP elements (policies and practices) and other factors that significantly improve firms’ environmental performance.
Progress Summary:
Funding for this research project was received in October 2003. Research began in January 2004. Cody Jones, graduate research assistant at Portland State University, joined the project in January 2004. Cameron Speir, graduate research assistant at the University of Illinois, joined the project in June 2004.
The period from January to May 2004 primarily was spent gathering secondary and primary information on environmental management programs of relevance to Oregon firms. The data are crucial to inform this research project’s sampling and survey strategies. A central thrust of the research is to examine the effects of public and private programs on business environmental performance. The proposed two-stage analytical model is structured to estimate these effects assuming that the program can be described as a set of common environmental management practices, such as environmental training for employees and periodic monitoring of environmental impacts. Note that “environmental management practice” refers to the set of management activities that comprise the firm’s environmental plan (Delmas and Toffel, 2004; Hutson, et al., 2004).
The first task undertaken was to inventory the VEPs that may be used by Oregon businesses. Extensive Internet research, literature reviews, and phone inquiries identified 107 possible local, state, national, and international VEPs that may be used by current firms. Numerous trade association programs were not surveyed in this initial stage.
Some common environmental management practices surfaced in the reviews:- Dedicated environmental personnel (management and staff)
- Formal environmental policy
- Formal environmental management system (EMS)
- International Organization for Standardization certification
- Employee environmental training.
The review of VEPs for Oregon firms led to three preliminary findings relevant to the sample and survey:
- There are a very large number of VEPs that can be used by Oregon firms, most with very low rates of participation by those firms.
- Many programs require common environmental management practices, such as performance monitoring, but some variation in required practices also exists.
- Most programs grant considerable flexibility to the participating firms in the design and execution of their environmental management.
The central analytical focus of this research project is to estimate the effects of VEPs via their required practices. The low participation rate by Oregon firms in most VEPs and the commonality of some practices across many programs may pose problems in estimating the effects of different VEPs. The research team tentatively has decided to restrict its analysis to a small subset of major VEPs with relatively high participation rates. The team also is exploring the use of various program characteristics, such as third party certification and technical assistance, as potential explanatory variables in determining the adoption of certain practices and environmental performance.
Efforts are now underway to identify a list of Oregon firms with key characteristics, such as sales volume and North American Industry Classification System/Standard Industrial Classification (NAICS/SIC) code, from which a sample can be drawn to capture the major forms of business environmental management. Business information, such as NAICS/SIC code and the number of employees, has been reviewed from ThomasGale Online, D & B (formerly Dun & Bradstreet), chambers of commerce, Census 2000, and other sources. Commonly reported policies and practices are being collected from annual environmental performance reports, corporate responsibility reports, media reports, trade organizations, and VEP case studies/literature. These data will be used in structuring phone interviews and focus groups to aid in the design of effective sampling and survey strategies.
The investigation of business lists suggests that the Oregon Department of Employment list of firms is likely the best sampling frame because it includes facility-level location data, NAICS codes, and other key information. A preliminary contact with the state agency indicates that it is legally feasible to use their list of firms for socioeconomic research. Given the low participation rates in major VEPs, a strategy to oversample member firms will be developed to improve the ability of the empirical analysis to distinguish their effects. The oversampling effect will be corrected in population estimates of policy and practice adoption and performance.
References:
Delmas M, Toffel M. Institutional pressure and environmental management practices: an empirical analysis. Presented at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Conference on Corporate Environmental Behavior and the Effectiveness of Government Interventions, Washington, DC, April 26-27, 2004.
Hutson A, Edwards Jr. D, Andrews RNL. Formalized environmental management procedures: what drives performance improvements? Evidence from four U.S. industries. Presented at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Conference on Corporate Environmental Behavior and the Effectiveness of Government Interventions, Washington, DC, April 26-27, 2004.
Future Activities:
The major activities during the next project year include:
- Conduct phone interviews of business decision makers and other professionals, such as regulators and industry consultants, to understand the following:
- Salient motivations and constraints that influence environmental management in different industrial sectors
- Good indicators of the green preferences/attitudes of senior management
- Reliable and “answerable” measures of the strength of various motivations and constraints for survey questions
- How firms choose among alternative environmental programs and at what level this decision is made (senior management or environmental affairs manager)
- A set, for example five to six, of the most common environmental practices that comprise environmental management across industrial sectors, such as adopting EMS and periodic monitoring of impacts
- The extent to which decisions about specific practices are driven by particular environmental objectives of the firm
- The variability in the way environmental management practices are implemented and the ways to capture the variability other than binary measures
- Relevant research and development efforts directed toward environmental improvements
- A set of common environmental performance indicators tracked by firms, for example, percent of waste recycled
- How firms measure, monitor, and report their performance in each area.
- Construct a survey instrument in collaboration with the Social and Economic Research Center at Washington State University that includes the above elements and other firm, industry, regulatory, and VEP factors, and pretest the survey through a focus group and personal interviews.
- Select a sample of Oregon businesses to send the survey for completion.
- Final survey preparation.
- Survey enumeration via Internet, mail, and phone (a mixed-mode approach).
- Database cleaning and preparation for analysis.
- Establish a Web site to facilitate data collection and product distribution.
Journal Articles:
No journal articles submitted with this report: View all 10 publications for this projectSupplemental Keywords:
socioeconomic, public policy, Northwest, pollution prevention, corporate environmental decision making,, RFA, ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY, Economic, Social, & Behavioral Science Research Program, Scientific Discipline, Geographic Area, INDUSTRY, Reinvention, State, Small Businesses, Corporate Performance, Economics and Business, decision-making, Social Science, Economics & Decision Making, Environmental Law, Oregon, polchotomas choice selectivity model, compliance assistance, policy making, decision analysis, decision making, environmental decision making, incentives, cost benefit, economic incentives, corporate evironmental reform, cost/benefit analysis, environmental policy, compliance costs, benefits assessment, corporate environmental behaviorProgress and Final Reports:
Original AbstractThe perspectives, information and conclusions conveyed in research project abstracts, progress reports, final reports, journal abstracts and journal publications convey the viewpoints of the principal investigator and may not represent the views and policies of ORD and EPA. Conclusions drawn by the principal investigators have not been reviewed by the Agency.