Contexts, timing, and corporate voluntary environmental behavior: A new look at voluntary participation in the Environmental Protection Agency's Green Lights program

Recent academic literature has suggested two different perspectives that explain participation in voluntary environmental programs. On one hand, market advantage motivation perspectives view voluntary participation as a strategic tool by which firms promote their environmental images and obtain competitive advantage in markets. On the other hand, institutional legitimacy motivation perspectives regard voluntary participation as a channel through which to gain institutional legitimacy and thus weaken regulatory standards that are either existing or forthcoming. This dissertation examines both perspectives of corporate voluntary participation by investigating the EPA-sponsored Green Lights (GL) voluntary program between 1991 and 2000. It examines conditions and contexts that drive GL participation and relate them to particular motivations. In addition, it addresses the timing decision underlying GL voluntary participation (i.e., early, late) and its systematic influence on voluntary motivations. A probit regression analysis provided partial evidentiary support that institutional legitimacy motivation perspectives are not as persuasive as the market advantage motivation perspectives in terms of explaining participation in the GL program. Larger firms and firms with proximate consumer relations, who are more likely to participate in the GL program to improve their "green" image and achieve competitive market advantages, were highly supported, while a firm in an industry with a poor environmental performance track record, whose motivation for the GL participation is to promote environmental legitimacy of the industry as a whole and prevent stringent environmental regulations, was weakly supported. In terms of different time dimensions of GL participation, the multinomial logit regression analysis partially supported that market advantage motivations that drive firms to participate in the GL program at the early diffusion stages lent their influences to the institutional legitimacy motivations at the late diffusion stages. Firms with proximate relations with final consumers are more likely to be early participants in the GL program, while firms in an industry with a poor environmental track record are more likely to be late participants in the GL program. Larger firms, however, are equally likely to become either early or late GL participants.