IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/envirc/v28y2010i5p851-871.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Impact of Internal and External Characteristics on the Adoption of Climate Mitigation Policies by US Municipalities

Author

Listed:
  • Damian Pitt

    (Department of Urban Affairs and Planning, Virginia Tech, 201 Architecture Annex, Blacksburg, VA 24061, USA)

Abstract

Many US municipalities are engaged in climate mitigation planning, or efforts to reduce their communities' greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions through land-use, transportation, and energy planning. However, they face a number of procedural and institutional obstacles that limit the adoption and implementation of those plans. The literature identifies some of the factors that lead municipalities to join relevant policy networks, but provides little guidance for overcoming the aforementioned obstacles and adopting policies to reduce community-wide GHG emissions. With this study I increase the understanding of climate mitigation planning by examining whether the adoption of these plans and policies is driven primarily by local demographic, economic, environmental, or political – institutional characteristics. My research is based upon a survey of 255 US municipalities. I combine the survey responses with secondary data and use multiple regression techniques to estimate the impact of fifteen demographic, political – institutional, economic, and environmental variables on the adoption of climate mitigation plans and policies. The influence of neighboring jurisdictions, the presence of staff members assigned to energy or climate planning, and the level of community environmental activism are found to have the greatest impact on climate mitigation policy adoption. These findings support the conclusion that the extent of climate mitigation planning is driven primarily by internal processes, and municipalities that are successful in this area do not fit any one profile according to their demographic, economic, or environmental characteristics.

Suggested Citation

  • Damian Pitt, 2010. "The Impact of Internal and External Characteristics on the Adoption of Climate Mitigation Policies by US Municipalities," Environment and Planning C, , vol. 28(5), pages 851-871, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:envirc:v:28:y:2010:i:5:p:851-871
    DOI: 10.1068/c09175
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1068/c09175
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1068/c09175?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Sandrine Mathy, 2007. "Urban and rural policies and the climate change issue: the French experience of governance," Post-Print halshs-00366296, HAL.
    2. Panayotou, Theodore, 1997. "Demystifying the environmental Kuznets curve: turning a black box into a policy tool," Environment and Development Economics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 2(4), pages 465-484, November.
    3. Berry, Frances Stokes & Berry, William D., 1990. "State Lottery Adoptions as Policy Innovations: An Event History Analysis," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 84(2), pages 395-415, June.
    4. Carolyn Kousky & Stephen H. Schneider, 2003. "Global climate policy: will cities lead the way?," Climate Policy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 3(4), pages 359-372, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Julie Cidell & Miriam A. Cope, 2014. "Factors explaining the adoption and impact of LEED-based green building policies at the municipal level," Journal of Environmental Planning and Management, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 57(12), pages 1763-1781, December.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Kaveh Rashidi & Anthony Patt, 2018. "Subsistence over symbolism: the role of transnational municipal networks on cities’ climate policy innovation and adoption," Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for Global Change, Springer, vol. 23(4), pages 507-523, April.
    2. Rui Wang, 2012. "Leaders, Followers, and Laggards: Adoption of the Us Conference of Mayors Climate Protection Agreement in California," Environment and Planning C, , vol. 30(6), pages 1116-1128, December.
    3. Yi, Hongtao & Feiock, Richard C. & Berry, Frances S., 2017. "Overcoming collective action barriers to energy sustainability: A longitudinal study of climate protection accord adoption by local governments," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 79(C), pages 339-346.
    4. Janel Jett & Leigh Raymond, 2021. "Issue Framing and U.S. State Energy and Climate Policy Choice," Review of Policy Research, Policy Studies Organization, vol. 38(3), pages 278-299, May.
    5. Nasreen, Samia & Anwar, Sofia & Ozturk, Ilhan, 2017. "Financial stability, energy consumption and environmental quality: Evidence from South Asian economies," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 67(C), pages 1105-1122.
    6. Kaika, Dimitra & Zervas, Efthimios, 2013. "The environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) theory. Part B: Critical issues," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 62(C), pages 1403-1411.
    7. Nicole Grunewald & Inmaculada Martínez-Zarzoso, 2009. "Driving Factors of Carbon Dioxide Emissions and the Impact from Kyoto Protocol," Ibero America Institute for Econ. Research (IAI) Discussion Papers 190, Ibero-America Institute for Economic Research.
    8. Ghimire, Narishwar & Woodward, Richard T., 2013. "Under- and over-use of pesticides: An international analysis," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 89(C), pages 73-81.
    9. Jha, Raghbendra & Murthy, K. V. Bhanu, 2003. "An inverse global environmental Kuznets curve," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 31(2), pages 352-368, June.
    10. Muhammad Shahbaz & Syed Jawad Hussain Shahzad & Mantu Kumar Mahalik & Perry Sadorsky, 2018. "How strong is the causal relationship between globalization and energy consumption in developed economies? A country-specific time-series and panel analysis," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 50(13), pages 1479-1494, March.
    11. George Halkos & Iacovos Psarianos, 2016. "Exploring the effect of including the environment in the neoclassical growth model," Environmental Economics and Policy Studies, Springer;Society for Environmental Economics and Policy Studies - SEEPS, vol. 18(3), pages 339-358, July.
    12. Daniel Fiorino, 2011. "Explaining national environmental performance: approaches, evidence, and implications," Policy Sciences, Springer;Society of Policy Sciences, vol. 44(4), pages 367-389, November.
    13. Zhou, Xiaoyan & Zhang, Jie & Li, Junpeng, 2013. "Industrial structural transformation and carbon dioxide emissions in China," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 57(C), pages 43-51.
    14. Amy Y. Li, 2017. "Covet Thy Neighbor or “Reverse Policy Diffusion”? State Adoption of Performance Funding 2.0," Research in Higher Education, Springer;Association for Institutional Research, vol. 58(7), pages 746-771, November.
    15. Thomas Longden, 2014. "Going Forward by Looking Backwards on the Environmental Kuznets Curve: an Analysis of CFCs, CO2 and the Montreal and Kyoto Protocols," Working Papers 2014.74, Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei.
    16. Maurizio Lisciandra & Carlo Migliardo, 2017. "An Empirical Study of the Impact of Corruption on Environmental Performance: Evidence from Panel Data," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 68(2), pages 297-318, October.
    17. Yicong Lin & Hanno Reuvers, 2020. "Cointegrating Polynomial Regressions with Power Law Trends: Environmental Kuznets Curve or Omitted Time Effects?," Papers 2009.02262, arXiv.org, revised Dec 2021.
    18. Lars P. Feld & Horst Zimmermann & Thomas Döring, 2003. "Föderalismus, Dezentralität und Wirtschaftswachstum," Vierteljahrshefte zur Wirtschaftsforschung / Quarterly Journal of Economic Research, DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research, vol. 72(3), pages 361-377.
    19. Tamazian, Artur & Bhaskara Rao, B., 2010. "Do economic, financial and institutional developments matter for environmental degradation? Evidence from transitional economies," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 32(1), pages 137-145, January.
    20. Masao Tsujimoto, 2023. "Public Utilities Corporate Growth and Environmental Conservation: Evidence from Japan," International Journal of Energy Economics and Policy, Econjournals, vol. 13(4), pages 404-422, July.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:envirc:v:28:y:2010:i:5:p:851-871. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.