Grantee Research Project Results

2004 Progress Report: Hazardous Waste Compliance and the Influence of Federal Initiatives, State Programs, and Corporate Characteristics

EPA Grant Number: R831036
Title: Hazardous Waste Compliance and the Influence of Federal Initiatives, State Programs, and Corporate Characteristics
Investigators: Stafford, Sarah L.
Institution: College of William and Mary-VA
EPA Project Officer: Hahn, Intaek
Project Period: June 1, 2003 through May 1, 2006
Project Period Covered by this Report: June 1, 2004 through May 1, 2005
Project Amount: $137,997
RFA: Corporate Environmental Behavior: Examining the Effectiveness of Government Interventions and Voluntary Initiatives (2002) RFA Text |  Recipients Lists
Research Category: Environmental Justice

Objective:

The objective of this research project is to provide an empirical examination of the factors that motivate compliance with hazardous waste regulations. The analysis includes more than 8,000 hazardous waste generators and management facilities across the United States representing a wide array of industries. The project will address three specific questions: (1) how audit policies affect hazardous waste compliance; (2) how state initiatives affect hazardous waste compliance; and (3) how corporate and facility characteristics affect hazardous waste compliance. By answering these questions, we will provide a better understanding of the effect of various regulatory and nonregulatory factors on compliance so that policies can be better designed and implemented to promote compliance and increase environmental protection.

Progress Summary:

A fundamental step toward answering these questions is the collection and compilation of the necessary data. We have extracted data on detected violations and state and federal inspections from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) information database RCRAInfo and combined them with data on waste generation and management from EPA’s Biennial Reporting System. To address the first question concerning the affect of audit policies on hazardous waste compliance, we compiled data on the use of audit policies from documents in the audit docket and from EPA enforcement databases. We also collected information on state environmental audit and self-policing programs. We first examined the effect of voluntary disclosures made under EPA’s audit policy on future enforcement efforts and determined that facilities that disclose are rewarded with a lower probability of inspection in the future and that facilities with good compliance records that disclose get a smaller benefit from disclosure than facilities with bad records. Our analysis also suggests that facilities that are not targeted by enforcement efforts are less likely to self-disclose, whereas facilities that are inspected frequently are more likely to disclose, perhaps because they have more to gain from disclosure (that is, the possibility of decreasing future enforcement efforts). In terms of overall compliance, we do not find any evidence that the federal audit policy has significantly improved compliance. State audit legislation, however, does appear to have increased compliance slightly. We also examined the factors that have affected state adoption of environmental audit legislation and self-policing policies.

Work is ongoing on both the second and third questions, although there are some preliminary results for both. We have found that traditional state enforcement efforts and state spending both increase compliance, as expected. In general, compliance assistance programs do not appear to increase hazardous waste compliance, although facilities in states with one-stop permitting programs are less likely to violate regulations. In terms of corporate characteristics, firms with multiple regulated facilities are less likely to violate regulations than single facility firms. There also appears to be a correlation in the probability of violation across facilities owned by the same firm. EPA does not, however, appear to use corporate compliance as a targeting measure.

Future Activities:

We will continue to address the second and third questions, including collecting and compiling additional data on corporate characteristics. Once the additional data are collected, the analysis of the effect of state initiative and corporate characteristics on hazardous waste compliance will be completed.

Supplemental Keywords:

monitoring, deterrence, self-policing, self-reporting, targeting, large quantity generator, decision-making, audit policies, compliance costs, corporate environmental behavior, decision analysis, decision making, economic benefits, economic incentives, enforcement impact,, RFA, Scientific Discipline, Economic, Social, & Behavioral Science Research Program, Economics & Decision Making, decision-making, Social Science, Economics and Business, Environmental Law, regulatory impact, economic benefits, measuring environmental performance, audit policies, compliance costs, legal and policy choices, policy analysis, policy making, policy incentives, corporate environmental behavior, environmental decision making, public policy, impact of federal policy instruments, hazardous waste regulatory compliance, decision analysis, economic incentives, legislative initiatives, regulatory reform, impact of state policy instruments, environmental policy, decision making

Relevant Websites:

http://faculty.wm.edu/slstaf/ Exit

Progress and Final Reports:

Original Abstract

2003 Progress Report

Final