What Drives Voluntary Eco-Certification in Mexico?

Allen Blackman and Santiago Guerrero ()

RFF Working Paper Series from Resources for the Future

Abstract: Advocates claim that voluntary programs can help shore up poorly performing command-and-control environmental regulation in developing countries. Although literature on this issue is quite thin, research on voluntary environmental programs in industrialized countries suggests that they are often ineffective because they mainly attract relatively clean plants free-riding on prior pollution control investments. We use plant-level data on some 59,000 facilities to identify the drivers of participation in the ISO 14001 certification program in Mexico. We find that regulatory fines spur certification: on average, a fine roughly doubles the likelihood of certification for three years. Hence, the program attracts dirty firms and at least has the potential to improve environmental performance. We also find that plants that sold their goods in overseas markets, used imported inputs, were relatively large, and were in certain sectors and states were more likely to be certified.

Keywords: voluntary environmental regulation; duration analysis; Mexico (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C41 O13 O54 Q56 Q58 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010-04-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-env
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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Journal Article: What drives voluntary eco-certification in Mexico? (2012)
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