Coming Clean: Information Disclosure and Environmental Performance

5. Facility-Level Perspectives on the TRI and Environmental Performance

5 Facility-Level Perspectives on the TRI and Environmental Performance The TRI has provided incentives for toxics use and waste reduction. —Facility respondent The [TRI] has no value to the facility. Chemical usage is tracked for operational reasons . . . independently of TRI. —Facility respondent The public’s right to have access to TRI data has pushed industry to seek alternatives to toxic chemical use and implement source reduction activities. —State-level public official Not all toxic reporting is helpful or necessary. —State-level public official As is true of most environmental programs, progress within the TRI program is in the eye of the beholder. As the opening quotations from our respondents indicate, variation in perceptions of the program and related efforts at pollution control and prevention is common. In addition , the responses are conditioned by exactly what kind of question is asked, when it is asked, and of whom. Indeed, our surveys and interviews with both facility respondents and public officials revealed widely varying perspectives about the TRI program and the set of expectations that it represents for facility environmental performance. Some see the program as valuable and effective while others do not, and some believe that changes in the program can make it more effective while others are skeptical of what such change could bring about. In this chapter we report on some of the distinguishing characteristics of the TRI program as seen by both facility managers and public officials. We discuss our findings about perceptions, attitudes, and behavior related to the management of toxic chemicals, drawing from both quantitative and qualitative data at our disposal. Quantitative analysis of 120 Chapter 5 survey results is supplemented with qualitative data from our surveys, interviews, and illustrative cases to provide a fuller picture of the views of both the regulators and the regulated. The qualitative data provide more of a “street level” assessment of how information disclosure actually works to bring about changes in corporate environmental behavior and in community decision making. As was the case with chapter 4, our reference point is the role of mediating factors in influencing environmental performance. Figure 2.1 in chapter 2 lays out a simple analytical framework of the factors that we thought would likely influence corporate behavior in the management of toxic chemicals. As the framework indicates, we believe the environmental behavior of firms and facilities is a function of the capacity of government, facilities, communities, and the media. All influence the environmental performance at facilities around the country. Critical to our argument is the basic fact that considerable variation in “capacity” exists. As the results below will show, different types of facilities have reacted in distinct ways to the TRI program and they have responded differently when it comes to improving their environmental performance. Some factors (e.g., facility management) have had a greater role than we expected, while other factors (e.g., community groups) have had much less of a role than we expected. The results also suggest that variations over time matter as well. Many facilities have set operating procedures for dealing with the TRI program that grew out of earlier frustrations with its requirements. Understanding the TRI Program in a Wider Context Causal factors that drive environmental performance at the facility level are potentially numerous. As we discussed in earlier chapters, the capacity of facilities to effectively manage pollution could be driven by internal factors such as their experience with the TRI as well as external factors such as community pressure or the threat of governmental action (Fung, Graham, and Weil 2007; Grant, Jones, and Trautner 2004; Gunningham , Kagen, and Thornton 2003; Hadden 1989; Hamilton 2005; Metzenbaum 2001; Stephan 2002; Tietenberg and Wheeler 1998). Our state-level analyses presented in chapter 4 have given us an indication of a few relevant factors, but the particular context at the facility level is still unanswered. Several sources of data can provide us with a fuller understanding of the complex set of motivators at the facility and community level. In this chapter we offer an initial description of variation Facility-Level Perspectives on the TRI and Environmental Performance 121 across facilities, including measurements of governmental, corporate, and community capacity that are central to our understanding of how mediating factors influence environmental performance. In chapter 6 we try to directly answer some of the questions about causality that we laid out in chapter 2...