Incorporating environmental institutions in environmental policy: changing behaviour by decisive information

Henrik Hammar

International Journal of Sustainable Development, 2000, vol. 3, issue 2, 170-178

Abstract: In this paper, I discuss, from a policy perspective, the relation between environmental institutions and transaction costs. I stress the importance of environmental institutions in providing decisive information, i.e. information that induces changes in behaviour, and thereby facilitates environmentally sound choices. If the objective is to put the economy on a sustainable path, I suggest that environmental institutions are one efficient means to loosen informational and political constraints in environmental policy, and, hence, that investment in environmental institutions is justified. The rationale is that environmental institutions direct the economy to a path where percentage growth in GDP is less wasteful. Expressions of environmental institutions - consumer awareness, producer responsibility and environmental organisations - are also discussed in order to make the discussion more tangible, i.e. how these provide decisive information.

Keywords: decisive information; environmental institutions; environmental policy; externalities; transaction costs. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2000
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.inderscience.com/link.php?id=1531 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ids:ijsusd:v:3:y:2000:i:2:p:170-178

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in International Journal of Sustainable Development from Inderscience Enterprises Ltd
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sarah Parker ().