IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/ucp/jaerec/doi10.1086-739114.html

Peer Effects in Voluntary Environmental Policies: An Application to Urban Water Quality

Author

Listed:
  • Daniel A. Brent
  • Douglas H. Wrenn
  • Gabriel R. Lara
  • Joseph Cook

Abstract

Stormwater runoff is a growing source of urban water pollution, costing cities billions of dollars. We investigate peer effects in a voluntary residential green stormwater infrastructure program that mitigates stormwater runoff. Our identification strategy exploits households’ relative position in eligible sewersheds that generates plausibly exogenous variation in eligible peers. Peer adoption causes a 0.2% increase in the annual adoption probability, a 66% increase relative to the mean. According to our calculations, the policy reduced compliance costs by $85–$235 million for the Seattle metropolitan area, of which roughly 40% is due to peer effects.

Suggested Citation

  • Daniel A. Brent & Douglas H. Wrenn & Gabriel R. Lara & Joseph Cook, 2026. "Peer Effects in Voluntary Environmental Policies: An Application to Urban Water Quality," Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, University of Chicago Press, vol. 13(2), pages 533-574.
    • Handle: RePEc:ucp:jaerec:doi:10.1086/739114
    DOI: 10.1086/739114
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/739114
    Download Restriction: Access to the online full text or PDF requires a subscription.
    File URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/739114
    Download Restriction: Access to the online full text or PDF requires a subscription.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1086/739114?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
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to

    for a different version of it.

    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:ucp:jaerec:doi:10.1086/739114. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Journals Division (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/JAERE .

    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.