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The author(s) shown below used Federal funds provided by the U.S.
Department of Justice and prepared the following final report:
Document Title: Why Do Corporations Obey Environmental Law?
Assessing Punitive and Cooperative Strategies
of Corporate Crime Control
Author(s): Sally S. Simpson ; Joel Garner ; Carole Gibbs
Document No.: 220693
Date Received: November 2007
Award Number: 2001-IJ-CX-0020
This report has not been published by the U.S. Department of Justice.
To provide better customer service, NCJRS has made this Federally-
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Opinions or points of view expressed are those
of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect
the official position or policies of the U.S.
Department of Justice.
This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not
been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)
and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
FINAL TECHNICAL REPORT
WHY DO CORPORATIONS OBEY ENVIRONMENTAL LAW?
ASSESSING PUNITIVE AND COOPERATIVE STRATEGIES OF
CORPORATE CRIME CONTROL
Sally S. Simpson
Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice
University of Maryland
Joel Garner
Joint Centers for Justice Studies
Carole Gibbs
Michigan State University
This report was prepared with support from award # 2001-LJ-CX-0020 from the National
Institute of Justice. Points of view are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the
official position of the U.S. Department of Justice, the University of Maryland or the Joint
Centers for Justice Studies.
This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not
been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)
and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
ABSTRACT
Punitive strategies for corporate crime control emphasize the use of formal legal sanctions,
especially but not exclusively those found in criminal law, to deter current and future offenders
from similar acts of misconduct. Cooperative crime control strategies emphasize the use of
regulatory persuasion to facilitate and enhance legal compliance. These strategies emphasize
pro-social norms, informal sanction threats, and intra-organizational controls to motivate firm
compliance. In this study, we use a triangulated research strategy that incorporates interviews
with environmental inspectors, secondary data analysis, and a vignette survey to shed light on the
relative merits of these strategies aimed at companies that fail to comply with environmental
regulation (specifically, the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System as authorized by
the Clean Water Act). Our results reveal that inspectors adopt both cooperative and punitive
strategies as they interact with the regulated community. Only some of this regulatory activity is
“officially” recorded, with an even smaller percent reported in the Permit Compliance System—
the database we utilized for our secondary data analysis. Analysis of the firm-level data found
little evidence of a deterrent effect for either punitive or cooperative intervention strategies.
Firms with the worst environmental records are inspected and sanctioned more often, with little
effect on company recidivism. Larger companies (those with more employees) and firms that
owned more facilities were inspected more often. Facility ownership was positively associated
with more severe sanctions. Overall, more profitable companies had better environmental
records. Our survey results were more promising regarding compliance strategies. Formal legal
sanctions and compliance strategies that build on ethical evaluations of managers and effective
internal compliance systems have a substantial effect on managerial decision-making. The
surveys also reveal that pro-social environmental actions by managers (such as responsiveness to
terrorism threats and a strategy of “over-compliance”) are more likely when there is shared
agreement and consistent communication within the firm about environmental goals.
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This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not
been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)
and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements……………………………………………………………………4
Overview………………………………………………………………………………5
I. The Nature and Context of Local Environmental Enforcement: ………… 9
What have we learned from interviews with inspectors?
Joel Garner
Design and Scope 11
Effectiveness of Enforcement 17
What have we Learned? 23
II. Company Characteristics, Compliance, and Recidivism: ………………...25
An analysis of secondary data.
Sally S. Simpson and Carole Gibbs
Sample and Industries 26
Effluent/Measurement Violations 32
Violation Rate 44
Reporting Violations 50
Firm Characteristics 70
Sanctions and Recidivism 81
Inspections and Recidivism 92
Firm Characteristics and Sanction Type 100
III. Compliance and Managerial Decision-Making: …………………………..116
An analysis of vignette data.
Sally S. Simpson
Survey Design 117
Analysis 126
Summary and Conclusions 144
IV. Research Appendices……………………………………………………….163
Appendix I 163
Appendix II 164
Appendix III 193
V. References …………………………………………………………………..206
VI. Endnotes……………………………………………………………………..214
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