The role of negotiating tools in the environmental policy mix instruments: determinants and effects of Environmental Agreement

Environmental Agreement (EA) is an instruments of political response to the need of protecting and improving environmental quality. EAs cover a wide arena of topics, not easily definable and classifiable, which also involve several institutions. In order to provide a further contribution to the actual debate on determinants and effects of voluntary agreements, we apply a rigorous multivariate statistical approach, using data from over 4,000 manufacturing facilities operating in many sectors in seven OECD countries to test the following propositions: i) participation to a voluntary environmental agreement improves firm’s environmental performance; ii) which external stakeholders influence an organization to participate in an environmental agreement. The econometric analysis shows that the participation to an environmental agreement significantly reduce the impact of the most common environmental aspects of an organization and it is influenced by several external influence groups.