Publications
Publications
- 2016
- Environmentally Responsible Supply Chains
Ignore, Avoid, Abandon, and Embrace: What Drives Firm Responses to Environmental Regulation?
By: David F. Drake and Robin L. Just
Abstract
A regulator's ability to incentivize environmental improvement among firms is vital in achieving long-term sustainability. However, firms can and do respond to environmental regulation in a variety of ways: complying with its intent; avoiding the regulation by offshoring or by abandoning the market; or ignoring the regulation by continuing with entrenched business practices. The path a profit-maximizing firm will choose depends, in part, on the expected cost of non-compliance, which is a product of the regulator's stated penalty, the likelihood that non-compliant practices are detected, and the likelihood that detected violations are punished. The type of regulatory regime—compliance-based or "pay-to-pollute"—and three important cost thresholds also drive firm response: i) the compliance or clean technology adoption threshold; ii) the offshoring threshold; and iii) the exit threshold. In this chapter, through examples of regulatory failures and successes, we develop a framework for understanding how these thresholds interact with the type of regulatory regime being considered and the expected cost of non-compliance to determine whether profit-maximizing firms ignore, avoid, or embrace environmental regulation.
Keywords
Sustainability; Environmental Operations; Regulation; Cost vs Benefits; For-Profit Firms; Operations; Environmental Sustainability
Citation
Drake, David F., and Robin L. Just. "Ignore, Avoid, Abandon, and Embrace: What Drives Firm Responses to Environmental Regulation?" In Environmentally Responsible Supply Chains, edited by Atalay Atasu. New York: Springer, 2016.