The mechanisms we have talked about so far, that cause people to act in environmentally responsible ways, can be classified as voluntary. There are mechanisms, however, that attempt to enforce environmentally sound behavior that are viewed as much more coercive. Fines and penalty payments for pollution are examples of negative economic sanction. However, most get very irritated when the government makes it unprofitable for them to engage in environmentally damaging behavior through regulation. The last mechanism to get an individual to act for the public good is force.
Force is physical and can be both negatively and positively used.
A negative use would be to shut down or imprison an individual for failure to comply with environmentally sound behavior. A positive use would be to indicate that, if an individual does not clean out a drainage ditch that has been filled by soil eroding from a nearby field, the county will do it for you and you will be charged. Force is the most costly mechanism for society as well as for the individual who engages in environmentally damaging behavior, and should be used as little as possible. As shown in figure 1, the greater the legitimacy of the cause, the nearer to the base of the pyramid the enforcement mechanism. Rules that are too often imposed by force are often ignored or changed, and the enforcer loses legitimacy.