IEAs and compliance : do treaty linkages play a role?

International environmental agreements (IEAs) address cross-border public goods, therefore they are faced with free-riding problems. Generally, the incentives of states to comply with such treaties are low as the benefits of compliance do not always outweigh the cost. Previous literature has pointed towards the importance of the treaty design characteristics in motivating compliance and deterring free-riding. The aim of this paper is to investigate the association of using of those mechanisms -treaty linkages- and the compliance with IEAs. By using data on 92 IEAs from the international regime database (IRD), the paper finds that the number of reinforcing links per treaty has a positive and significant association with better compliance. Counter to existing literature, trade links, however, do not exhibit a significant association with better compliance.