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Climate change, biodiversity loss, antibiotic resistance, and other global challenges pose major collective action problems: A group benefits from a certain action, but no individual has sufficient incentive to act alone. Formal institutions, e.g., laws and treaties, have helped address issues like ozone depletion, lead pollution, and acid rain. However, formal institutions are not always able to enforce collectively desirable outcomes. In such cases, informal institutions, such as social norms, can be important. If conditions are right, policy can support social norm changes, helping address even global problems. To judge when this is realistic, and what role policy can play, we discuss three crucial questions: Is a tipping point likely to exist, such that vicious cycles of socially damaging behavior can potentially be turned into virtuous ones? Can policy create tipping points where none exist? Can policy push the system past the tipping point?
Green infrastructure installations such as rain gardens and bioswales are increasingly regarded as viable tools to mitigate stormwater runoff at the parcel level. The use of adaptive management to implement and monitor green infrastructure projects as experimental attempts to manage stormwater has not been adequately explored as a way to optimize green infrastructure performance or increase social and political acceptance. Efforts to improve stormwater management through green infrastructure suffer from the complexity of overlapping jurisdictional boundaries, as well as interacting social and political forces that dictate the flow, consumption, conservation and disposal of urban wastewater flows. Within this urban milieu, adaptive management—rigorous experimentation applied as policy—can inform new wastewater management techniques such as the implementation of green infrastructure projects. In this article, we present a narrative of scientists and practitioners working together to apply an adaptive management approach to green infrastructure implementation for stormwater management in Cleveland, Ohio. In Cleveland, contextual legal requirements and environmental factors created an opportunity for government researchers, stormwater managers and community organizers to engage in the development of two distinct sets of rain gardens, each borne of unique social, economic and environmental processes. In this article we analyze social and political barriers to applying adaptive management as a framework for implementing green infrastructure experiments as policy. We conclude with a series of lessons learned and a reflection on the prospects for adaptive management to facilitate green infrastructure implementation for improved stormwater management.
Urban stormwater runoff is a critical source of degradation to stream ecosystems globally. Despite broad appreciation by stream ecologists of negative effects of stormwater runoff, stormwater management objectives still typically center on flood and pollution mitigation without an explicit focus on altered hydrology. Resulting management approaches are unlikely to protect the ecological structure and function of streams adequately. We present critical elements of stormwater management
necessary for protecting stream ecosystems through 5 principles intended to be broadly applicable to all urban landscapes that drain to a receiving stream: 1) the ecosystems to be protected and a target ecological state should be explicitly identified; 2) the postdevelopment balance of evapotranspiration, stream flow, and infiltration should mimic the predevelopment balance, which typically requires keeping significant runoff volume from reaching the stream; 3) stormwater control measures (SCMs) should deliver flow regimes that mimic the predevelopment regime in quality and quantity; 4) SCMs should have capacity to store rain
events for all storms that would not have produced widespread surface runoff in a predevelopment state, thereby avoiding increased frequency of disturbance to biota; and 5) SCMs should be applied to all impervious surfaces in the catchment of the target stream. These principles present a range of technical and social challenges. Existing infrastructural, institutional, or governance contexts often prevent application of the principles to the degree necessary to achieve effective protection or restoration,
but significant potential exists for multiple co-benefits from SCM technologies (e.g., water supply and climate-change adaptation) that may remove barriers to implementation. Our set of ideal principles for stream protection is intended as a guide for innovators who seek to develop new approaches to stormwater management rather than accept seemingly insurmountable historical constraints, which guarantee future, ongoing degradation.
The American lawn receives more care, time, and attention from individuals and households than any other natural space (Robbins 200749.
Robbins, P. 2007. Lawn people: How grasses, weeds, and chemicals make us who we are. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.View all references). Given the ubiquity of turf grass across the American landscape and the importance of associated environmental impacts, a growing body of research exists that investigates lawn care behaviors or the factors that influence them. To extend that research tradition, the project reported here was designed to understand lawn care practices, attitudes, and values in urbanizing New England communities and to elucidate the correlates of environmentally friendly lawn care behavior. Findings can be used to inform the development of successful outreach and education to facilitate meaningful behavioral change. The results indicate that a high level of concern for environmental issues and water quality exists among homeowners, and identify important factors related to willingness to engage in alternative lawn care practices to protect water quality.
Aiming to help municipalities develop effective education and outreach campaigns to reduce stormwater pollutants, such as pet waste, this study applied the Health Belief Model (HBM) to identify perceptions of dog waste and corresponding collection behaviors from dog owners living in a small U.S. city. Results of 455 online survey responses strongly support the HBM, a well-established health communication theory, and provide evidence for helping municipalities develop dog waste reduction campaigns. These findings guide dog waste behavior change campaign strategies discussed at the end of the article, and point to HBM's potential application to other environmental issues.
The goal of this study was to investigate the degree to which school-based and nonformal education programs that focus on air quality (AQ) achieved measurable AQ improvements, and whether specific instructional methods were associated with those improvements. We completed a standardized telephone interview with representatives of 54 AQ education programs. Quantitative analysis of these interviews generated three key findings: (1) nearly half (46%) of the programs we studied reported evidence that AQ had actually improved over the course of their projects; (2) most (89%) of the programs we studied took some sort of action to improve AQ; and (3) programs reporting more place-based learning qualities and practices such as service-learning and community partnerships were more likely to report improvements in AQ (r =.40, p <.01).
Different mental models exist regarding environmental problems and solutions. To engender sustainable approaches to stormwater management, there needs to be understanding of, and engagement with, these different perspectives. This study used cognitive mapping to elicit and transparently capture perspectives of 31 stakeholders on problems, solutions and barriers to the implementation of urban stormwater management. Three core perspectives were discovered and synthesized as causal loop diagrams: conventional fixes, low impact solutions and community development. Analysis confirms perspectives are diverse and conflicting. Each perspective has shortcomings in providing solutions that can address the perceived challenges. Therefore, the integration of solutions strategies is proposed. The implementation of low impact solutions may address environmental degradation and go some way to assist rehabilitation in the short term. In order to realise sustainable stormwater management, the long term focus must be on social learning, behaviour change and the creation of effective partnerships between communities and local authorities.
Based upon a review of the literature, this paper focuses on the provision of drainage systems and stormwater management strategies in lowincome urban settlements. Although engineered infrastructure is a necessary component for drainage of urban runoff, non-structural approaches are important complementary measures, focusing on actions to prevent and mitigate problems related to flooding, as well as those related to pollution and deterioration in environmental health conditions. As these rely predominantly on behavioural changes to be effective, a participatory approach is recommended within a strategic framework of urban stormwater planning.
Environmental flow assessment frameworks have begun to consider changes to flow regimes resulting from land-use change. Urban stormwater runoff, which degrades streams through altered volume, pattern and quality of flow, presents a problem that challenges dominant approaches to stormwater and water resource management, and to environmental flow assessment. We used evidence of ecological response to different stormwater drainage systems to develop methods for input to environmental flow assessment. We identified the nature of hydrologic change resulting from conventional urban stormwater runoff, and the mechanisms by which such hydrologic change is prevented in streams where ecological condition has been protected. We also quantified the increase in total volume resulting from urban stormwater runoff, by comparing annual streamflow volumes from undeveloped catchments with the volumes that would run off impervious surfaces under the same rainfall regimes. In catchments with as little as 5-10% total imperviousness, conventional stormwater drainage, associated with poor in-stream ecological condition, reduces contributions to baseflows and increases the frequency and magnitude of storm flows, but in similarly impervious catchments in which streams retain good ecological condition, informal drainage to forested hillslopes, without a direct piped discharge to the stream, results in little such hydrologic change. In urbanized catchments, dispersed urban stormwater retention measures can potentially protect urban stream ecosystems by mimicking the hydrologic effects of informal drainage, if sufficient water is harvested and kept out of the stream, and if discharged water is treated to a suitable quality. Urban stormwater is a new class of environmental flow problem: one that requires reduction of a large excess volume of water to maintain riverine ecological integrity. It is the best type of problem, because solving it provides an opportunity to solve other problems such as the provision of water for human use.
Procedural justice generally enhances an authority's legitimacy and encourages people to comply with an authority's decisions and rules. We argue, however, that previous research on procedural justice and legitimacy has examined legitimacy in a limited way by focusing solely on the perceived legitimacy of authorities and ignoring how people may perceive the legitimacy of the laws and rules they enforce. In addition, no research to date has examined how such perceptions of legitimacy may moderate the effect of procedural justice on compliance behavior. Using survey data collected across three different regulatory contexts – taxation (Study 1), social security (Study 2), and law enforcement (Study 3) – the findings suggest that one's perceptions of the legitimacy of the law moderates the effect of procedural justice on compliance behaviors; procedural justice is more important for shaping compliance behaviors when people question the legitimacy of the laws than when they accept them as legitimate. An explanation of these findings using a social distancing framework is offered, along with a discussion of the implications the findings have on enforcement.
Based on interviews with facility managers in the electroplating and chemical industries, this study examines regulated firms' perceptions of how various instrumental, normative, and social factors motivated their firms' environmental actions. We found that "implicit general deterrence" (the overall effect of sustained inspection and enforcement activity) was far more important than either specific or general deterrence, and that deterrence in any form was of far greater concern to small and medium-sized enterprises than it was to large ones. Most reputation-sensitive firms in the environmentally sensitive chemical industry chose to go substantially beyond compliance for reasons that related to risk management and to the perceived need to protect their social license to operate. Almost half our respondents also provided normative explanations for why they complied. Overall, we conclude that there are various, often interwoven, strands that must be taken into account in understanding what motivates corporate environmental behavior, and how they play out depends very much on the size and sophistication of companies themselves and on the characteristics of the industry sector within which they are located.
Persuasive communication and public commitment were used to encourage recycling in a citywide program. The persuasive communication was a combination of factors which have been found by laboratory researchers to produce attitude and/or behavior change. The public commitment manipulation involved signing a statement supportive of recycling. Households which did not recycle during a 6-week baseline period were selected for experimental study. Trained Boy Scouts made an oral informational statement and then gave each of 201 experimental households one of three treatments (a written persuasive communication, public commitment, or both). A control group of 132 homes received no treatment. Recycling was observed for 6 weeks following delivery of all treatments. Results indicated that the three treatment groups recycled significantly more than the control group but did not differ significantly from each other. Future directions for applied work in this domain are discussed.
A combination of calculated, normative, and social motivations as well as awareness of rules and capacity to comply are thought to foster compliance with regulations. Hypotheses about these factors were tested with data concerning Danish farmers' compliance with agro-environmental regulations. Three key findings emerge: that farmers' awareness of rules plays a critical role; that normative and social motivations are as influential as calculated motivations in enhancing compliance; and that inspectors' enforcement style affects compliance differently from that posited in much of the literature. It was also found that formalism in inspection can be helpful to a point, while coercion by inspectors can backfire. Taken together, these findings counter arguments concerning the harm of legalism and the benefits of flexible enforcement. This study contributes to the understanding of factors that shape compliance with social and environmental regulations. © 2001 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.
This article reports on empirical tests of two theories for improving compliance with state environmental regulations. One theory argues for centralization of enforcement responsibilities with state agencies, while the other focuses on enforcement strategies, arguing for an approach that emphasizes capacity building and the social and moral bases of compliance in addition to deterrence and the threatened application of sanctions. Using evidence from North Carolina, we show that centralization does not necessarily enhance compliance, but cooperative enforcement strategies can improve the effectiveness of regulations that seek to attain performance standards. Compliance with simpler specification standards, however, can be attained just as well with easier to administer deterrent enforcement strategies based on frequent inspections and adequate sanctions.
Effective watershed and stormwater education and public involvement programs strive to increase awareness of watersheds and landscape connectivity and also encourage behavior changes that may be contributing to water quality and quantity problems within a targeted basin. According to new guidance from the US Environmental Protection Agency on stormwater permit improvement, regulators are looking for programs to utilize targeted issues relevant to a community to guide the development of a comprehensive outreach program. In an effort to collect information on public perception, knowledge, behaviors and willingness to get involved in improved stormwater management, a telephone survey was implemented. This manuscript presents the results of this survey and offers insight on stakeholders’ attitudes, knowledge, and behaviors related to watershed and stormwater, critical factors in the initial development of effective stormwater education and public involvement programs.
Urban areas contribute pollutants such as excess nitrogen and bacteria to receiving water bodies. The objective of this project was to determine if stormwater quality could be improved by educating homeowners and implementing best management practices (BMPs) in a suburban neighborhood. The paired watershed design was used, where a control and treatment watershed are monitored during a calibration and treatment period. Treatment consisted of the education of homeowners and structural changes designed to minimize nonpoint pollution. Some changes in measured behavior were reported. According to the treatment period survey, 11% of respondents in the treatment watershed began fertilizing their lawn based on the results of a soil test, whereas none had done so previously. In addition, 82% of respondents in the treatment watershed stated that they left clippings on the lawn compared to 62% from the initial survey. Twelve of 34 lots (35%) adopted some BMPs following education efforts, indicating a significant (P = 0.001) increase in BMP use overall. However, a chi2 analysis of survey data indicated no significant changes in measured behavior with regard to specific questions. Analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) results indicated that a 75% reduction in nitrite + nitrate - N (change in intercept, P = 0.001) and a 127% reduction in fecal coliform bacteria (change in slope, P = 0.05) concentrations occurred. However, the treatment period regression was non-significant for bacteria. Total nitrogen, total phosphorus, and ammonia-N concentrations did not change significantly. Intensive education efforts produced BMP implementation and measurable water quality improvements.
This article summarizes a research project that investigated the use, performance, cost, and evaluation of nonstructural measures to improve urban stormwater quality. A survey of urban stormwater managers from Australia, New Zealand, and the United States revealed a widespread trend of increasing use of nonstructural measures among leading stormwater management agencies, with at least 76% of 41 types of nonstructural measures being found to be increasing in use. Data gathered from the survey, an international literature review, and a multicriteria analysis highlighted four nonstructural measures of greatest potential value: mandatory town planning controls that promote the adoption of low-impact development principles and techniques; development of strategic urban stormwater management plans for a city, shire, or catchment; stormwater management measures and programs for construction/building sites; and stormwater management activities related to municipal maintenance operations such as maintenance of the stormwater drainage network and manual litter collections. Knowledge gained on the use and performance of nonstructural measures from the survey, literature review, and three trial evaluation projects was used to develop tailored monitoring and evaluation guidelines for these types of measure. These guidelines incorporate a new evaluation framework based on seven alternative styles of evaluation that range from simply monitoring whether a nonstructural measure has been fully implemented to monitoring its impact on waterway health. This research helps to build the stormwater management industry's knowledge base concerning nonstructural measures and provides a practical tool to address common impediments associated with monitoring and evaluating the performance and cost of these measures.
In urban and suburban areas, stormwater runoff is a primary stressor on surface waters. Conventional urban stormwater drainage systems often route runoff directly to streams and rivers, thus exacerbating pollutant inputs and hydrologic disturbance, and resulting in the degradation of ecosystem structure and function. Decentralized stormwater management tools, such as low impact development (LID) or water sensitive urban design (WSUD), may offer a more sustainable solution to stormwater management if implemented at a watershed scale. These tools are designed to pond, infiltrate, and harvest water at the source, encouraging evaporation, evapotranspiration, groundwater recharge, and re-use of stormwater. While there are numerous demonstrations of WSUD practices, there are few examples of widespread implementation at a watershed scale with the explicit objective of protecting or restoring a receiving stream. This article identifies seven major impediments to sustainable urban stormwater management: (1) uncertainties in performance and cost, (2) insufficient engineering standards and guidelines, (3) fragmented responsibilities, (4) lack of institutional capacity, (5) lack of legislative mandate, (6) lack of funding and effective market incentives, and (7) resistance to change. By comparing experiences from Australia and the United States, two developed countries with existing conventional stormwater infrastructure and escalating stream ecosystem degradation, we highlight challenges facing sustainable urban stormwater management and offer several examples of successful, regional WSUD implementation. We conclude by identifying solutions to each of the seven impediments that, when employed separately or in combination, should encourage widespread implementation of WSUD with watershed-based goals to protect human health and safety, and stream ecosystems.
The first chapter of this book introduces the importance of studying business model innovation (BMI), the methodology we applied to study the subject, and specific statistics about the literature published in academic and practice-oriented journals in the last 15 years. Specifically, this chapter offers an overview of the processes followed for our systematic literature review (SLR) and the rigorous protocol that includes the three-stage procedure (i.e., planning, execution, and reporting) suggested by Tranfield et al. (Br J Manag 14:207–222, 2003). Gathering the most influential pieces on SLRs, this chapter also offers some hints for conducting a successful SLR and illustrates the benefits associated with doing so. In addition, this chapter describes the thematic and the informal ontological classification we adopted to analyze the 156 papers included in our systematic literature review. Thus, the first section of this chapter defines what is meant by an SLR. The second section offers an overview of the tasks of an SLR. The other sections present the process followed for the thematic and ontological analyses that are central to this work. The final section provides some statistics on the 156 papers included in our SLR, underlining specific information about the journals that published the articles, the methodological approaches applied in the papers, the industries included in the studies, the geographical contexts, and the disciplines that contributed to the understanding of BMI.
Industry is responsible for about 50% of world energy consumption and therefore for a big impact concerning greenhouse gas emissions and climate change. An important strategy to achieve the target of energy policies in Europe, of reducing the energy consumption by 20% by 2020, must consider reducing energy consumption in industry. When talking about industry, it must be remembered that small and medium-sized enterprises are a central part of economies worldwide, comprising 99% of enterprises and providing about 60% of employment. Increasing their energy efficiency represents considerable value for economies, societies and the enterprises themselves. Together with cost savings, energy efficiency can deliver other benefits that can help those companies grow and develop, for example by improving productivity, profitability and competitiveness and product quality. By reducing reliance on energy imports, and lowering environmental impacts, it increases value, not only to business, but also to society. Despite the benefits resulting from energy efficiency measures, their implementation in companies is not an easy task, due to existing barriers that must be identified in order to define motivation strategies that can fight those obstacles. A project, aiming to identify the situation in medium-sized enterprises and to provide them the necessary conditions to adopt energy efficiency improvements, was developed in Portugal. It enabled to conclude about best practices and technological solutions that answer the energy efficiency problems and to identify the main barriers that prevent that adoption, and measures that can contribute to overcome them. The research within the sectors studied showed that changing individual energy behaviors requires strategies that address both internal and external influences on behavior change and not simply new technologies, price incentives or information campaigns.
Stormwater management is a concern for communities in the United States, particularly those with populations over 10,000 because of mandates to reduce runoff volumes and associated pollutants. An extension Stormwater and Greenspace Work Group was organized at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln (UNL) in 2006 to develop educational programs addressing municipal stormwater runoff using green infrastructure and other best management practices. A USDA-NIFA integrated grant was received in 2009 which greatly expanded the audience and scope of programming to include extension, education, and research components. Extension programming was targeted at design and green industry professionals, MS4 stormwater program managers, municipal officials, Master Gardeners, and homeowners. Extension activities included: meeting presentations; all-day rain garden workshops/installations; green infrastructure tours; rain barrel construction workshops; web-based resources; interactive rain garden models; youth activities; and publications. Academic programs in landscape architecture and landscape horticulture expanded curriculum in green infrastructure, low impact development, and stormwater best management practice design and construction. Efforts have culminated in new course lectures as well as studio design projects that conceptually addressed real-world clients and stormwater management projects. Project research studies evaluated in-situ rain garden hydrologic and plant growth attributes, homeowner perspectives on rain garden installation programs, and current regional bioretention design standards. The strong integration of extension, teaching, and research, which can often be a significant challenge, is a primary key to the success of UNL stormwater management programming. The resulting synergy has helped communities and individuals more effectively manage stormwater quantity and quality while building a knowledge-base that will support future initiatives and programs.
Urban stormwater run-off is a threat to stream ecosystems. New approaches to stormwater management aim to protect urban streams from such impacts, by retaining, treating and using stormwater at its source. As up to ∼50% of runoff from urban surfaces comes from private property, fostering stormwater retention requires effective householder engagement. We evaluated householder participation in the Little Stringybark Creek project, a stormwater retrofit programme aimed at waterway protection, using qualitative enquiry through formal and informal interviews to identify factors that influenced participation. Participation was governed by multiple factors, with financial incentives and personal co-benefits of tanks primary motivators, while process complexity and distrust were primary barriers. Results suggest an approach combining education to encourage review of subjective norms and attitudes, with incentives to mitigate behavioural controls can transform public behaviour towards sustainable stormwater management.
Policy makers around the world seem to have widely endorsed the use of voluntary approaches as a means to address concerns about environmental protection and resource degradation. Voluntary approaches have been adopted in many developed countries, as well as in a number of developing countries. However, economists have not uniformly endorsed this policy approach. The economic literature suggests that in some contexts voluntary approaches can be effective if carefully designed but are not likely to be effective otherwise. This article provides an overview of the economics of voluntary approaches, with a particular focus on issues related to design. It seeks to highlight the features that are important determinants of both their success in improving environmental outcomes and their efficiency. Although the discussion focuses on environmental protection, it is also relevant in other contexts such as conservation and fisheries management.
Typically, communities implement some subset of best management practices (BMP) to control their stormwater flows and NPS. Phase II of the U.S. Clean Water Act (CWA) requires public input, education, and participation, among other things, as part of watershed management planning processes for addressing nonpoint source pollution. It has been recognized that integrating stakeholders’ input and values into decision-making processes often results in good public policies adequately supported by the public. Choice experiment survey approaches are well suited as a means for increasing public participation in watershed decisions and for evaluating the relative attractiveness of alternative BMP for stormwater management and non-point source pollution control. Therefore we designed and implemented a choice experiment survey to learn about public preferences for alternative best management practices (BMP) for stormwater water management, identify BMP combinations likely to be supported by local stakeholders, and to increase public participation in watershed management decision making. The results demonstrate the effectiveness of choice experiments for evaluating preferences for alternative BMP for watershed management. Furthermore, the results reveal that stakeholders clearly prefer some BMP to others and that the extent of each BMP's application in a watershed plan matters to stakeholders.
Quantifying the quality of urban storm water is an important prerequisite to the effective management of urban runoff, which is recognized as the major nonpoint source of pollution in urban areas. Although data on urban storm-water quality are widely available, they are often based on relatively limited data sets, usually containing few samples per event and/or few events per catchment. This paper reports on a large scale monitoring of the key storm-water pollutants found in urban discharges during both wet and dry weather from seven urban catchments in South Eastern Australia. The catchments are all separately sewered (with wholly piped systems) with varying sizes and land uses. Using the same monitoring technique, between 16 and 52 pollutographs were captured at each site for total suspended solid (TSS), total phosphorus, and total nitrogen (TN), while event mean concentrations (EMCs) of heavy metals and major ions, as well as species of N and P, were recorded at a subset of sites. It was found that EMCs of TSS were around 50% less than have been typically reported in earlier literature. During wet weather, nutrients were similar to previously reported, as were most metals concentrations. However, zinc concentrations were significantly higher than previously reported. EMCs of TSS were higher during storm flows than in baseflow, while TN concentrations were consistently higher during baseflow. EMCs of all pollutants monitored were poor with simple hydrological parameters (e.g., event rainfall depth); however, event pollution loads correlated very well with the rainfall intensity to a power, summed over the event duration. It was not possible to distinguish an impact of land use on pollutant concentrations. The first-flush effect was found not to be significant at all sites except the smallest catchment with the simplest drainage layout (the roof of a large building). All these findings have significant implication for treatment strategies with the significantly lower than previously observed TSS requiring consideration in future modeling and treatment design.
This article develops a conceptual framework for advancing theories of environ- mentally significant individual behavior and reports on the attempts of the author's research group and others to develop such a theory. It discusses defini- tions of environmentally significant behavior; classifies the behaviors and their causes; assesses theories of environmentalism, focusing especially on value-belief-norm theory; evaluates the relationship between environmental concern and behavior; and summarizes evidence on the factors that determine environmentally significant behaviors and that can effectively alter them. The article concludes by presenting some major propositions supported by available research and some principles for guiding future research and informing the design of behavioral programs for environmental protection. Recent developments in theory and research give hope for building the under- standing needed to effectively alter human behaviors that contribute to environ- mental problems. This article develops a conceptual framework for the theory of environmentally significant individual behavior, reports on developments toward such a theory, and addresses five issues critical to building a theory that can inform efforts to promote proenvironmental behavior.
Our study evaluates the equity and efficiency of OSHA enforcement relating to the nature of the firm, the intensity of the inspection, and the size of penalty, based on the experience of 6,842 firms between 1979 and 1985. We found that: (1) enforcement actions against firms with one hundred to five hundred employees had greater general and specific deterrence effects than against larger or smaller firms; (2) superficial inspections that checked only the firm's injury records were ineffective. Health inspections, which tend to be more intense, also reduced injuries, but repeated inspections in the same year did not; and (3) larger penalties did not increase either general or specific deterrence. Small penalties decreased injuries as much as larger ones, and took considerably less inspection time. We discuss implications for policy, and emphasize the need for further research on the equity and efficiency of enforcement.
This paper addresses the role of differing regulatory contexts in shaping compliance motivations. These are examined for farmers and environmental regulation in Denmark, homebuilders and building safety in the United States, and marine facilities and water quality in the United States. The findings show that the influence of different regulatory practices and the relevance of normative and social considerations differ among these regulatory contexts. This calls attention to the need for more research on the interplay of regulatory arrangements and contexts in shaping motivations for regulatory compliance.
Urban stormwater runoff is a growing contributor to the impairment of surface waters. Nature-based technologies, including green roofs, vegetated swales, grassed filter strips, bioretention, and pervious pavements have been demonstrated to be effective in mitigating detrimental runoff characteristics. Lacking, however, has been a fundamental engineering analysis approach to these technologies. Current design guidance is based on empirical recommendations and most performance data are based on limited, localized observations. Flow balances, including infiltration, evapotranspiration and surface discharge, based on fundamental fluid dynamics principles can be employed through analysis to understand flow management. Water quality improvements will occur through a specific unit processes or mechanisms, including sedimentation, filtration, adsorption, biotransformation, bio-uptake, and heat transfer. The performance of a specific technology will depend on the facility configuration and makeup, climate, surrounding soil characteristics, topography, and the site hydrology. Applying fundamental flow and water quality processes to storm water management technologies will allow quantitative design and predictable performance characterization.
This paper uses census data for 116 pulp and paper mills over the period 1979–1990 to examine the determinants of compliance with air pollution regulations. Several plant characteristics are significant: large plants, old plants, and pulp mills comply less frequently, as do plants with water pollution or OSHA violations, but firm characteristics generally are not significant. Enforcement activity increases compliance, but in a heterogeneous way: pulp mills are less sensitive to inspections, while plants owned by larger firms are less sensitive to inspections and more sensitive to “other” enforcement actions, consistent with the authors’ expectations and prior research results.
Regulatory punishment for pollution violations is a mainstay of nearly every industrialized nation's environmental policy.
This article reviews the existing empirical evidence on the impacts of environmental monitoring and enforcement actions. We
first provide context by investigating the U.S. regulatory setting. We then briefly discuss how economists think about environmental
enforcement. We next consider recent empirical evidence linking regulator actions to subsequent pollution discharges and compliance
behavior. Since the literature primarily studies U.S. institutions, our review focuses mainly on the effects of Environmental
Protection Agency and U.S. state activities. The consistent findings from this literature review are as follows: (1) environmental
monitoring and enforcement activities generate substantial specific deterrence, reducing future violations at the targeted
firm; (2) environmental monitoring and enforcement activities generate substantial general deterrence, reducing future violations
at facilities other than the targeted one; and (3) environmental monitoring and enforcement activities generate not only reductions
in violations but also significant reductions in emissions. We conclude by discussing policy implications and identifying
gaps in the current state of knowledge.
Grass swales and filter strips are among the simplest and most cost-effective form of stormwater control measures. Despite this, relatively few controlled studies have been undertaken to assess their performance, and very few models are available to predict their efficiency. This paper focuses on field performance of grass filters in removal of total suspended solids (TSS) from overland flow, and verification of TRAVA, a model of sediment behaviour in grass filters (published earlier in Deletic, A., 2001. Modelling of water and sediment transport over grassed areas. Journal of Hydrology 248, 168–182; Deletic, A., 2005. Sediment behaviour in runoff over grassed surfaces. Journal of Hydrology 301, 108–122). Limited nutrient removal data were collected, at one of the field sites. The paper presents results from controlled field tests undertaken on a grass filter strip in Aberdeen, Scotland, and a grass swale in Brisbane, Australia. In both studies TSS concentrations were recorded along the grass, for artificial inflow of water and sediment of different flow rates and sediment concentrations. In the Aberdeen study the emphasis was on performance in relation to different sediment particle sizes, while for the Brisbane swale, treatment performance for total nitrogen (TN), and total phosphorus (TP) were also recorded. Both experimental programmes had an unsteady input of pollutants. The Aberdeen strip reduced sediment inflow concentrations by 61–86%, whilst the Brisbane swale removed an average of 69, 46, and 56% of the total loads of TSS, TP and TN, respectively. TRAVA was used to model both the strip and swale. For the Aberdeen strip, the differences between the measured and modelled sediment loading rates were within ±25% of measured. Modelled concentrations in outflow from the Brisbane swale were within ±17% of measured. The predicted mass of total sediment removed during experiments was within ±50% of measured for the Aberdeen strip and ±11% for the Brisbane swale. TRAVA is therefore shown to be a reliable tool for prediction of the performance of grass filters used for stormwater treatment.
Contenido: Introducción. Una guía para técnicas estadísticas. Revisión de estadísticas univariadas y bivariadas. Limpiando el terreno: despliegue de los datos previo al análisis. Regresión múltiple. frecuencias multidireccional. Análisis de covarianza. Análisis multivariado de varianza y covarianza. Análisis de perfiles de medidas repetidas. Análisis de función discriminante. Regresión logística. Análisis factorial y de componentes principales. Modelado de ecuación estructural. Una revisión del modelo general lineal.
Despite the development of procedures for calculating sample size as a function of relevant effect size parameters, rules of thumb tend to persist in designs of multiple regression studies. One explanation for their persistence may be the difficulty in formulating a reasonable a priori value of an effect size to be detected. This article presents methods for calculating effect sizes in multiple regression from a variety of perspectives and also introduces a new method based on an exchangeability structure among predictor variables. No single method is deemed superior, but rather examples show that a combination of methods is likely to be most valuable in many situations. A simulation provides a 2nd explanation for why rules of thumb for choosing sample size have persisted but also shows that the outcome of such underpowered studies will be a literature consisting of seemingly contradictory results.
This paper describes a method for comparing the pollutant removal of a number of structural stormwater treatment devices, commonly referred to as best management practices (BMPs). Historically, the pollutant removal ability of a BMP has been expressed as a percent reduction in concentration or load. Unfortunately, the calculated percent reduction in pollutant concentration is strongly affected by the influent concentration, with the calculated reduction generally being much lower when the event mean concentrations (EMCs) in the untreated runoff from the test watershed are low. The objective of the proposed methodology is to eliminate this problem by predicting BMP performance for an arbitrary influent concentration, so that BMPs evaluated in different watersheds can be compared as if the influent quality at all sites were the same. This method allows BMPs to be compared based on the quality of effluent produced and the mass reduction. The proposed method uses linear regression as the primary tool to compute the expected effluent concentration from a BMP, given a specific influent concentration of interest and was developed using data collected in the California Department of Transportation BMP Retrofit Pilot Program. This technique reveals that for media filters, the concentration of sediment and other particle-associated pollutants in treated runoff is generally unrelated to influent quality and is relatively constant. Wet basins with large permanent pool volumes also have effluent concentrations that are constant for most constituents and unrelated to influent concentrations. In these situations, the "percent reduction" in a pollutant EMC is not an inherent characteristic of the BMP, but a function of the influent EMC, because the quality of effluent produced is constant. Predicting the effluent quality of several types of conventional BMPs based on a common influent concentration allows an objective comparison of their performance and the selection of a BMP that addresses specific constituents of concern.
This paper describes a modelling approach for evaluating the efficiency of different non-structural best management practices for stormwater management. A scenario with a set of source reduction practices was simulated using the substance flow model SEWSYS for an urban catchment in the city of Göteborg, Sweden. The scenario is based on a hypothetical control program that includes prevention, education and regulations. The simulation shows relatively high reductions of copper and PAH, 77% and 50%, respectively. The reduction in copper is mainly due to less copper roof corrosion and brake wear, while reduced road wear has the greatest effect for PAH. An important result from this study is that the nonstructural BMPs applied did not give a sufficient reduction in pollution to meet the desirable environmental quality criteria. To meet these criteria, additional BMPs must be implemented, preferably a combination of both non-structural and structural measures.
A monitoring and evaluation program was undertaken, involving six different styles of evaluation to determine whether a low-cost, eight month education campaign that operated within a small commercial district was successful at changing people's behavior and reducing stormwater litter loads. This project also tested newly developed guidelines for monitoring and evaluating all types of non-structural stormwater quality best management practices (BMPs). The project evaluated: the extent and quality of the campaign's implementation; the degree to which it changed the awareness, attitudes, self-reported behavior and actual behavior of merchants and the public; and the nature of changes in stormwater litter loads. Overall, the education campaign produced mixed results, with the net result being modestly positive. Specifically, it was: unsuccessful at significantly influencing the knowledge or attitudes of merchants or the public; modestly successful at influencing the behavior of merchants and the public; and modestly successful at reducing litter loads in stormwater. At a theoretical level, the project highlights how using different 'styles' of BMP evaluation can help to build a more complete picture of a BMP's performance. At a practical level, the project helped to improve the monitoring and evaluation guidelines and produced evidence-based design guidelines for future campaigns that aim to reduce littering in commercial areas.
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