Coming Clean: Information Disclosure and Environmental Performance

2. How Does Information Disclosure Work?

2 How Does Information Disclosure Work? In the earliest years of the TRI program, as information about chemical releases became public, many of the nation’s leading corporations prominently proclaimed their dedication to reducing those releases substantially . Some of the largest companies confessed that they had no idea prior to compiling the TRI data that they were releasing such massive quantities of dangerous chemicals. The public availability of the information appeared to move them to announce significant changes in their operations and in their chemical releases. But why did they do that, and what are the implications for environmental information disclosure as a policy strategy? Among the reasons most often cited for corporate reactions to the initial TRI reports are the negative publicity the companies now faced over their newly visible chemical releases, community pressure from affected residents located near their facilities, pressure from organized environmental and other community groups—or local officials, concern from newly created local emergency planning organizations, and threats of additional regulation from state regulatory officials. As we reported in chapter 1, TRI releases have indeed declined substantially since the first inventory of chemicals was published in 1988, even if considerable variation exists in the extent of this decline across the universe of companies and facilities. The overall downward trend would seem to legitimize the TRI program’s reliance on information disclosure as a policy strategy and to speak to the future of such a strategy for addressing other environmental and social challenges, including mitigation of climate change. Can information disclosure assist the public, government officials, and even corporations themselves in achieving such societal goals? Can it bring about enough change that regulatory requirements might be relaxed, at least for some corporations that demonstrate improved performance? Might information disclosure even replace command-and-control regulation in some instances? To speak 24 Chapter 2 confidently about this potential, we need to know more about how the compilation, disclosure, and impact of such information works in practice. The intriguing question of how environmental information affects decision making has long attracted interest, and for good reason. There is a widely shared assumption that such information should matter and in particular that environmental management decisions, whether in the private or public sector, ought to be based on scientific data, including careful and objective appraisals of health risks, especially those that rely on public data releases such as the TRI. That this outcome is not uniformly found has moved some scholars to ask about just how technical environmental information informs policymaking and administrative processes and what factors make a difference in strengthening that relationship (Ascher, Steelman, and Healy 2010; Keller 2009; Kraft 1998; Powell 1999; Sabatier 1978). Similar questions can be asked about corporate and community use of such information when it is distributed via a program such as the TRI. As Laurence Lynn and colleagues (1978), among others, observed long ago, the connection between knowledge and policy decisions is tenuous and uncertain, in part because of the differing and sometimes conflicting perceptions and expectations between knowledge producers (for example, scientists, policy analysts, and planners) and knowledge users, especially policymakers, but also the public and manufacturing facilities. In a nutshell, despite a strong belief among scientists and many academics that knowledge should drive decision-making processes, the reality is that often it does not, nor does it necessarily even change many minds (Hadden 1991; Lindblom 1980; Lindblom and Cohen 1979). These arguments ring true today as well, as any number of recent disputes over the use or misuse of science in environmental policy decisions , from climate change to the dangers of toxic chemicals such as mercury and lead, attest (Vig and Kraft 2010). In part because of the kinds of questions now raised about public perception of environmental risk and both public and policymaker understanding of environmental science, interest has grown in the subject of how environmental information is generated, transmitted, and used throughout the policy process (Ascher, Steelman, and Healy 2010; Herb, Helms, and Jensen 2003). We borrow from this rich scholarly tradition to offer a more focused and empirical analysis of how one kind of information, about toxic chemical releases and exposure, makes a difference within the corporate setting, communities, and regulatory agencies. How Does Information Disclosure Work? 25 In this chapter we discuss the study’s overall objectives, the methods we use, and the key research questions. We also...