Our work will also help business associations design and communicate the nature and functioning of industry sponsored voluntary initiatives. Already, our research is influencing the Chemical Manufacturers Association's management of the Responsible Care program. At the same time, the flexibility that these new forms provide may allow firms to act strategically and thus may cause the disintegration of voluntary regulations themselves. Thus, the central issue in this study is how to allow firms the flexibility to self-govern their actions without allowing them to act with guile. For the environment, this is of vital importance.
Many environmental issues involve complex economic and environmental information.
Funneling such problems through government is expensive and time consuming. Our study will begin to reveal when the actors themselves can form a self-governing system to regulate their collective behavior. It will provide guidelines to help industry members to design more effective voluntary programs. Voluntary regulation can shift the cost of governance from the public to the industries, and in so doing reduce the total cost. Because of their unrivaled knowledge about the industry and their unique access to information, companies may be able to more efficiently allocate improvements and police adherence.