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a competing hypothesis would be that a firms adoption of more pollution prevention practices redirects resources away from environmental research and development toward short-lived environmental improvements, and thus leads to fewer environmental patents. The project gathered firm-level data over time from several sources and used appropriate statistical techniques to test these hypotheses. The key variables used were the number of voluntary pollution prevention (P2) practices and releases by Ohio businesses over time, and the number of environmental patents, also over time. Several other variables were also incorporated. The research teams statistical analysis indicates that the adoption of voluntary pollution prevention practices does stimulate environmental research and development. However, the estimated impact of mandatory pollution regulations is between ten and seventeen times stronger than that of voluntary adoption. The analysis therefore suggests that while the voluntary approach can produce significant environmental improvements by lowering emissions of mostly unregulated pollutants, it is far less effective than mandatory regulations in inducing firms to invest in environmental research that leads to the development of cleaner production technologies. The research team received a grant from the U.S. EPA to organize a workshop at The Ohio State University in 2012 to provide a forum for businesses, the Ohio EPA, and researchers in environmental policy-related disciplines to assess current knowledge and debate the effects and effectiveness of voluntary pollution reduction programs, with a particular focus on firm competitiveness.
There is a lack of research exploring the effects of voluntary pollution prevention practices on a businesss ability to develop new environmental technologies.
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