Empowering The Community: Information Strategies For Pollution Control

Disclosure strategies, which involve public and/or private attempts to increase the availability of information on pollution, form the basis for what some have called the third wave in pollution control policy (after legal regulation--the first wave--and market-based instruments --the second wave). While these strategies have become commonplace in natural resource settings (forest certification programs, for example), they are less familiar in a pollution control context. Yet both the research on, and experience with, this approach is now growing in both OECD and developing countries. This paper will review what we know and don't know about the use of disclosure strategies to control pollution. Following a review of the conceptual foundations for disclosure strategies, the paper considers how the policy setting influences the type of information strategy employed. Examples of innovative disclosure strategies in the U.S., Latin America and Asia, and the channels through which they operate, is followed by a review of the empirical research on their effectiveness. Finally we close with our sense of where further research would be particularly helpful. [author]