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...less focused. Yet many activities are regulated by simpler admonitions that amount to little more than "do no harm." These form the basis of what legal scholars label as the social control function of the law (Hunt 1993; McCann and March 1996; Tyler 1990). In the arena of environmental policy, various mandates the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, and so on--establish detailed regulations and enforcement regimes that target large polluters. Myriad of other firms are expected to take actions to avert harms in response to the broad admonitions of the basic air and water quality acts. These firms generally fall under the "radar scope" of the specific environmental regulatory mandates and enforcement regimes.
As we discuss in more detail, these situations fall into a broad class of regulatory efforts that are subject to voluntary approaches to regulation. Under this approach, the governmental role is one of calling attention to potential harms and facilitating voluntary actions by relevant firms or industry associations to address those harms. This consists of reminding firms of their duty to avoid harms and guidance about what to do. Given that there is always the threat of legal action against violators under the underlying regulatory mandates, the approach is more aptly considered quasi-voluntary.
Regulatory scholars have studied the motivations of firms to comply with regulations as well as their willingness to take actions that either go beyond regulatory requirements or are taken in the absence of regulations (for overviews, see Arora and Carson 1996; Prakash 2000; Segerson and Miceli 1998; Winter and May 2001). These studies highlight the role of regulatory enforcement when present along with extraregulatory factors that include sense of commitment to address problems and the influence of peer and other group pressures. These latter forces have been encapsulated by Gunningham, Kagan, and Thornton (2004) in what they label as the "social license" that firms operate under as established by the community and interest group context within which firms are located. In essence, this avenue of regulatory scholarship reifies what public administration scholars know well--the implementation context matters (see, in particular, Elmore 1980; Palumbo and Calista 1990; Winter 1990).
We consider the implementation context for voluntary regulatory programs with particular attention to three sets of actors. State regulatory agencies are considered as the main governmental actor. As with any voluntary regulatory program, their involvement--but not necessarily influence--is by definition less than what it would be under a mandatory program. Also considered are local environmental groups, which are traditionally thought of as the key pressure groups and irritants in affecting the behaviors of potential polluters (Hays, Esler, and Hays 1996; Rochon and Mazmanian 1993). A third set of interests is the trade associations, which play potentially important roles as information conduits and buffers for more stringent regulation (Orazem and Mattila 1990; Salisbury et al. 1987; for a concise review of advocacy organization activities, see Andrews and Edwards 2004).
We examine the sway of these three sets of actors and the factors that affect their respective degrees of influence in shaping voluntary actions to address potential harms. The specific foci are the choices that operators of marine facilities make to lessen potential harms to water quality based on the data we collected about marina facilities in California and Washington. The discussion is organized as follows. First, we discuss the conceptual foundations of interest group environments and voluntary regulatory programs. We draw upon the literature on regulatory compliance motivations, information processing and decision making, and administrative contexts to construct hypotheses about group influences. We examine these hypotheses for the marine facilities with descriptive and multivariate analyses. From these findings we draw conclusions about the roles of different types of groups in influencing voluntary actions to avert environmental harms.
CONCEPTUAL FOUNDATIONS
It is useful to consider what we mean by voluntary regulatory programs and the prospective roles of interest groups in shaping firms' actions under such regimes. This background provides a basis for the development of hypotheses about factors that affect the influence of different actors in shaping voluntary actions by firms to address potential harms.
Voluntary Programs: Inducing Actions
Voluntary regulatory programs are part of a new era of regulation that seeks to lessen the heavy hand of government in seeking to meet broad regulatory objectives. Under the voluntary approach, government calls attention to a potential harm and facilitates voluntary actions by relevant firms or industry associations to address the potential harms. These come in many forms, ranging from negotiated industry accords in the Netherlands and other European countries (Delmas and Terlaak 2002), to industry-developed standards like those developed by the chemical industry (King and Lennox 2000), to consensus-based standards by private standard-setting organizations like ISO 14001 for environmental management systems (Potoski and Prakash 2004), to the most common form in the United States of governmental exhortation and facilitation of voluntary actions. We consider the latter in this research. Under this type of voluntary regulation, government promulgates guidelines for best management practices and encourages adherence to them as a means of achieving desired outcomes.
This provides a noncoercive means for achieving desired outcomes for which the key policy instruments are exhortation and various forms of financial, technical, and educational assistance (Grabosky 1995; Harrison 1998). The assumption is that entities that contribute to environmental harms are willing to address the harms but fail to do so because of various complications (Brehm and Hamilton 1996; Kagan and Scholz 1984). They fail to address harms because they do not recognize the existence of a problem (requiring information), do not understand what can be done to address the problem (requiring education), or do not have the capacity to take desired actions (requiring financial or technical assistance).
Differing Interests: Trade Associations and Environmental Groups
Interest groups are viewed in the public policy literature as having a great impact on the shape of policy implementation (Bardach 1980; Scicchitano and Hedge 1993). Much of this literature describes a policy environment in which groups are portrayed as frustrating rather than facilitating implementation (Ingram and Mann 1989). Recent scholarship has pointed to the potentially positive and necessary roles that interest groups fulfill in assisting policy implementation as part of an overall governance structure (Gunningham and Grabosky 1998). We add to this theoretical discussion by assessing the role of potentially opposing interests: trade associations and environmental groups.
Clearly, not all interest groups have the same power, goals, tactics, and, ultimately, influence over implementation. Interest groups fulfill materialistic interests of members in providing specific benefits and altruistic interests in advancing broader purposes, or they provide both sets of benefits (Clark and Wilson 1961; Salisbury 1992; Wilson 1975). Material benefits consist of such things as increased pay, market opportunities, or other access derived from membership in a given interest group. Purposive benefits are the emotive rewards of being part of an organization that promotes a cause that is important to members. Trade groups and environmental groups might be considered as falling on opposite ends of a hypothetical continuum of materialistic to purposive benefits. The contrast between the potential influences of these two types of groups is central to this research.
Trade associations serve members unified over more tangible business-oriented goals and, as such, are concerned with ways of reducing the friction between business and government. There is an extensive literature regarding groups that represent material interests acting at the state (Gray and Jacob 1996) and national legislative level (Martin 2000), with relatively little attention to their role in affecting regulatory implementation. Trade associations provide tangible benefits in regulatory contexts by helping to avert or lessen regulatory burdens. Trade associations also help member organizations address regulatory requirements by providing technical assistance and other information.
Environmental groups serve constituents concerned with social (Berry 1999) or purposive (expressive) goals (Clark and Wilson 1961; Wilson 1975). The influence of environmental groups in regulatory implementation has been a subject of study for traditional regulation (see Winter and May 2002) but is studied less for voluntary regulation. As discussed by Ingram and Mann (1989), environmental groups seek environmental improvements through the creation of new laws and regulations and by educational and other efforts to encourage individuals and organizations to be good stewards of the environment. These efforts provide intangible benefits that members derive from the expression of the common value of environmentalism.
INFLUENCES ON VOLUNTARY DECISION MAKING
The preceding characterization of voluntary programs suggests a regulatory environment that can be characterized as producing a relative paucity of information and high uncertainty for decision making about actions to avert environmental harms. These information gaps and uncertainties must be addressed if voluntary programs are to be successful in inducing desired actions. At the same time, the willingness of firms to act and the influence of governmental and nongovernmental actors upon firms' willingness to act are affected by more than just information provision. Drawing from theorizing about these motivations and decision making, we frame a set of hypotheses about the influence of trade associations, environmental groups, and governmental agencies in voluntary regulation.
Commitment to Act: Negative versus Positive Motivations
Voluntary regulatory...
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