Exploring the landscape of sustainability performance management systems in U.S. local governments

Abstract

Municipalities around the globe are increasingly adopting and integrating sustainability goals into their service functions. As with many public programs, local sustainability initiatives benefit from regular and systematic assessment aimed at determining the extent to which efforts are achieving their performance goals. However, there currently is little understanding of how local governments are collecting and tracking data on their sustainability-related performance and to what extent they integrate its lessons into their sustainability management practice. This study helps fill this gap by investigating U.S. local governments’ sustainability performance management systems and provides empirical evidence on some of their key institutional and system characteristics. Our findings indicate that a significant number of U.S. local governments are engaged in sustainability performance assessment, but they vary in their ability to establish appropriate indicators as well as supporting mechanisms, indicating significant room for improvement in local sustainability performance management.