Voluntary Agreements as an environmental policy instrument — evaluation criteria

As the resource to voluntary action grows wider, a question must be held on the factors that influence the performance of a Voluntary Agreement as an environmental policy instrument. Our goal in this paper is to answer that question, outlining the main variables that make a Voluntary Agreement simultaneously efficient, effective and just. Using several articles on the subject of voluntary action, under the themes of “economic regulation” and of contracts under “asymmetric information”, as well as available reports on the Portuguese and European experience on the use of Voluntary Agreements, we will undertake this objective following three steps: (i) we begin by underlining the main factors that justify the private and public option for Voluntary Action. (ii) We then present an analysis of the co-regulation process under the requirements of the three E criteria: efficiency, effectiveness and equity. (iii) Finally we conclude by presenting an “evaluation table” that summarises the elements that we found to be the most important for the “performance” of the voluntary action in each one of those criteria.