Mimetic Pressure for Sustainability Efforts in a Metropolitan Area

Abstract

Metropolitan cities can serve as laboratories of sustainable development by experimenting with innovative sustainability programs while leveraging advantages of metropolitan areas. With the importance of cities’ sustainability efforts, scholars have increasingly explored what factors motivate local governments to implement voluntary sustainability programs by focusing on internal government and community characteristics. However, what is missing in the previous discussion is whether or not city governments respond to sustainability efforts by other government entities, especially neighboring local governments. By analyzing sustainability programs of 251 suburban cities in 66 metropolitan areas, we find that suburban cities are likely to consider sustainability efforts of central cities in the same metropolitan area when determining the extent to which they implement their sustainability programs. However, they are not necessarily responsive to sustainability efforts of nearby suburban cities. Drawing on mimetic isomorphism literature, our research sheds light on how local governments make sustainability policy decisions in the relationships with other local governments and provides policy implications for the important role of central cities in facilitating collective sustainability efforts in metropolitan areas. We combined the importance of geographical proximity with the concept of mimetic isomorphism and provided theoretical justification for choosing organizational role models in the local sustainability context.