Impact of Government-Sponsored Pollution Prevention Practices on Environmental Compliance and Enforcement: Evidence from a Sample of US Manufacturing Facilities

Abdoul G. Sam

No 49306, 2009 Annual Meeting, July 26-28, 2009, Milwaukee, Wisconsin from Agricultural and Applied Economics Association

Abstract: A two-way fixed effects Poisson model is used to investigate the impact of 43 EPA-sponsored pollution prevention (P2) practices on compliance and enforcement for a sample of facilities in the US manufacturing sector. I find that P2 adoption reduces environmental violations in three industries while increasing violations in two others. P2 adoption also spurs fewer enforcement actions in three industries. I further partition the P2 practices into three categories based on their approach to improve environmental performance. In doing so, I find that practices that involve changes in operating procedures--about a third of adopted P2 practices--such as instituting a self-inspection and monitoring program to discover spills or leak sources, improving maintenance scheduling and/or labeling procedures, are effective in reducing violations while practices that involve equipment or material changes are not. I also find that adopters of practices that require changes in either procedures or manufacturing equipment--about half of adopted practices--are rewarded with a more cooperative treatment of environmental infractions with fewer enforcement actions.

Keywords: Environmental Economics and Policy; Resource/Energy Economics and Policy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 37
Date: 2009
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-env and nep-reg
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ags:aaea09:49306

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.49306

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