Challenges to Effective Third-Party Certification in Environmental Policy

• Main Author: Davis, Tyler Blake
• Other Authors: Thomas, Craig
• Format: Thesis
• Language: English
• Published: 2018
• Subjects: Club Theory; Enetrepreneurship; Sustainability; Third-party certification; Public policy; Economics; Environmental economics; Public affairs; alaska pollock; Alaska
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/1773/42094

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Washington, 2018 This dissertation expands club theory to include motivations of club owners as well as club members to better predict outcomes of interest to policy makers. A club is an organization that creates voluntary standards such as methods of production with lower negative externalities. A club owner is an individual or institution that creates rules, collects dues and enforces club member compliance. A club member is the organization or firm that chooses membership in a club and agrees to comply with club rules. Club theory has been proposed as an opportunity for “win-win-win” outcomes for consumers, producers and policy makers. In this scenario consumers have preferences for credence attributes of environmentally sensitive methods of production identified by firm membership in a club, club members receive benefits of price premiums or market share unavailable to firms who are not club members, and policy makers forgo costly command and control tools for low cost market-based tools. The expanded club theory in this dissertation identifies circumstances where incentives are not aligned to create win-win-win outcomes. The first chapter presents an extension to club theory, the second chapter presents qualitative research on the motivations of the U.S. Alaska pollock fishery to join clubs or create clubs and the third chapter presents quantitative research on the stated preference for third-party certified goods with varying numbers of goods with third-party certification in the same issue-space. Chapter one expands club theory to include the motivations of club owners to capture benefits unrelated to club member benefits to identify under what circumstances outcomes from the use of club goods will be similar to common pool resources. This chapter addresses the question: How can relaxing existing assumptions about motivation of actors in club theory improve the prediction of outcomes from third-party certification? Club theory is built upon the premise that benefits to club ...