Stakeholders who seek to reward or punish businesses for their environmental programs often cannot observe these organizations’ internal policies and operations. To address these informational problems, and signal their beyond-compliance environmental commitments, some businesses are participating in voluntary environmental programs (VEPs). This article examines whether business managers associate the brand value of VEPs – due to their differing program sponsors – with the perceived preferences of their critical stakeholders. Drawing on a novel data set of nearly 300 organizations, we assess business’ participation in 19 government- and industry-sponsored VEPs. We find that managers who recognize the importance of stakeholder influences on their business’ environmental practices are more likely to participate in a VEP but that pressures from different stakeholders are associated with variations in organizations’ participation in either government- or industry-sponsored VEPs.
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Sponsorship Matters: Assessing Business Participation in Government- and Industry-sponsored Voluntary Environmental Programs
Darnall, Nicole and Potoski, Matthew and Prakash, Aseem, Sponsorship Matters: Assessing Business Participation in Government- and Industry-Sponsored Voluntary Environmental Programs (March 30, 2010). Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, Vol. 20, No. 2, pp. 283-307, 2010, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1582793