Voluntary Policy Research Articles

Evaluating the efficacy of different smoking policies in restaurants and bars in Beijing, China: A four-year follow-up study

In 2006, the World Health Organization Framework Convention on Tobacco Control became effective in mainland China. In 2007, advocacy on voluntary smoking bans in restaurants was initiated in Beijing, and in 2008 the Beijing government implemented a smoking regulation, requiring big restaurants to prohibit or restrict smoking. To evaluate the efficacy of different smoking policies adopted by Beijing restaurants and bars from 2006 to 2010. The study conducted field observations of patron smoking behavior and monitored fine particulate matter from secondhand smoke (SHS PM) from 91, 85, 94 and 79 Beijing restaurants and bars in 2006, 2007, 2008 and 2010, respectively, during peak-patronage times, with overlaps of venues during each two years. Area nicotine sampling during peak patronage times and servers' personal nicotine sampling during their working shifts were also conducted in 2010. Smoking was nominally prohibited or restricted in 18% of restaurants and bars monitored in 2006, in 11% of venues in 2007, in 83% of venues in 2008, and in 69% of venues in 2010. However, smoking was observed in more than 40% of the nominal nonsmoking venues/sections in 2008 and 2010. The median of observed patron active smoker density (ASD) was 0.24, 0.27, 0.00 and 0.10 active smokers per 100 m3 in 2006, 2007, 2008 and 2010, respectively. The median of SHS PM concentrations was 53, 83, 18 and 27 μg/m3, respectively. In 2010, both the median SHS PM and air nicotine concentrations in designated nonsmoking sections were about 40% of those in designated smoking sections, according to simultaneous sampling in both sections. Servers' personal exposure to air nicotine was quite similar in venues with different nominal smoking policies. In the 15 venues followed from 2006 to 2010, SHS PM concentrations changed randomly from 2006 to 2007, decreased in most venues in 2008, and then increased to some extent in 2010. Voluntary smoking policy is rarely adopted and cannot protect people from SHS exposure in restaurants and bars. The 2008 Beijing governmental smoking regulation failed to significantly reduce SHS exposure shortly or two years after its implementation. Restricting smoking to designated sections cannot eliminate SHS exposure.

Navigating local smoke-free multi-unit housing policy adoption.

California state-funded local tobacco control projects have instituted smoke-free multi-unit housing (MUH) policy adoption campaigns in order to secure voluntary policy throughout the state. While landlords can legally prohibit smoking at MUH complexes in California, they often oppose such measures. The objective of this study was to analyze voluntary smoke-free policy campaigns of state-funded local projects by focusing on the challenges they faced. Specifically, we examined 40 local campaigns in California led by county health departments and community based organizations, focusing on the barriers the local projects often had to overcome to enact policy. Our results identify arguments and issues typically raised by MUH property landlords, including the notion of tenant smoker and privacy rights, potential negative effects of smoke-free policy, and issues concerning the enforcement of policy. Moreover, relationships between local project personnel and MUH management often soured, which sometimes derailed smoke-free policy campaigns altogether. Our findings provide agencies with insights from the MUH property landlord perspective that will serve to inform future campaign strategy.

Multiple deliveries: The reduced impact of in vitro fertilisation in Australia

The number of twins born in Australia steadily increased from 2420 sets in 1983 to 4458 sets in 2010. At one stage, almost 25% of all twin deliveries in Australia were a consequence of assisted reproductive technologies. To determine the influence of a policy of single embryo transfer (SET) on the rate of multiple deliveries in Australia. We used population data to compare the prevalence of twin and higher order multiple births in women giving birth in Australia before and after the implementation of the RTAC COP 2001 and 2005 revisions for ART units. There was a steady fall in the twin delivery rate for assisted reproductive technologies from 210.4 per 1000 deliveries in 2001 to 84.3 per 1000 deliveries in 2009. In 2009, assisted reproductive technologies accounted for approximately 16% of all twin births from 3% of all conceptions, substantially less than the 24.5% in 2002. The decline in multiple births is multifactorial. However, the fall in the proportion of ART multiple births has paralleled adoption of a voluntary policy of SET within a setting of largely public funding of ART.

Policy Experimentation and the Emergence of Domestic Voluntary Carbon Trading in China

As China has become the largest greenhouse gas (GHG) emitter in terms of total annual emissions, to promote GHG emissions reduction in China turns out to be crucial to the success of the global efforts to address climate change. This paper explores the development of the Chinese Domestic Voluntary Carbon Market (DVCM) in order to understand how carbon trading institutions have emerged and developed in China. To do this, it traces and analyzes the roles of the Chinese government and other key actors. Through process tracing and literature review, it argues that the pre-legislation and territorially fragmented development pattern of the Chinese DVCM has resulted from the activities of Chinese local governments and non-state actors under the policy experimentation approach adopted by the Chinese central government. It concludes with brief comments on the Chinese policy experimentation approach, and suggests that some measures can be taken to promote voluntary emissions reduction and policy learning.

The Amsterdam Metropolitan Area Challenge: Opportunities for Inclusive Coproduction in City-Region Governance

The city-regional level has gained importance in various planning systems as a result of the continuous need to solve strategic planning issues that transcend political and jurisdictional boundaries. Governance through voluntary policy networks gained importance as a way to make policy objective delivery at this city-regional level more effective and efficient. However, the multilevel organized accountability of policy networks with different logics and rationalities challenges policy implementation processes. This paper develops a framework to analyze and understand how the structure of voluntary city-regional policy networks affects the effectiveness, efficiency, and democratic legitimacy of these networks and the policies they create. Using the case of the Amsterdam Metropolitan Area as an example, we show that city-region governance needs to involve not only government interests but also interests of market players and NGOs to become effective, efficient, and legitimate and that national policy interference is to a large extent incompatible with it.

Determinants of Environmental Product Innovation in the Detergent and Maintenance Sector: Application for the European Ecolabel Certification

The aim of this article is to determine the relevant factors of environmental product innovation. In the sector of detergent and maintenance products the European Ecolabel certification, as an environmental voluntary policy, is considered one of multiple kinds of environmental innovation. According to the empirical analysis (a survey was conducted in the French market) we find that the strategy of the biotechnological firm, the market demand, the certification benefits (brand image) and policy regulation (REACH directive…) seem to be important factors in the European Ecolabel certification. Although, this voluntary policy drives some firms to innovation, the environmental performance and accession of the most firms in this sector are still a challenge. Firms which have used biomolecular substances, under suppliers’ incentives effect, have not systematically developed European Ecolabel certified products.

Smoking in Movies: A New Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Core Surveillance Indicator

Youth who are heavily exposed to onscreen smoking are approximately 2 to 3 times as likely to begin smoking as youth who are lightly exposed (1), and the Surgeon General concluded that there is a causal relationship between depictions of smoking in the movies and smoking initiation among young people (2). Among the 3 major motion picture companies with policies aimed at reducing tobacco-use incidents in their movies, the number of onscreen incidents per youth-rated movie (rated G, PG, or PG-13 by the Motion Picture Association of America) decreased 95.8% from 2005 through 2010 (3). These results appeared to indicate that movie companies were making progress at reducing smoking depictions in youth-oriented movies and that a company-by-company approach of adopting voluntary policies could be effective in nearly eliminating youth exposure to tobacco imagery in movies. However, new data from 2011 published by Glantz and colleagues (4) in Preventing Chronic Disease raise serious concerns about this individual company approach. Glantz and colleagues found that in 2011, depictions of tobacco use per youth-rated movie rebounded; estimated instances of tobacco use in 2011 were more than one-third higher than in 2010 (4). Furthermore, the authors found that the largest increase in tobacco-use incidents in youth-rated movies was among the 3 movie companies that had produced the dramatic decline from 1995 through 2010 and had policies designed to discourage depictions of smoking in their movies. As a result of this sharp rebound, the difference in tobacco-use incidents per youth-rated movie between companies with policies and companies without policies diminished in 2011 (4). This difference suggests that individual company policies may not be sufficient to sustain a reduction in youth exposure to tobacco-use and other pro-tobacco imagery in movies and that more formal, industry-wide policies are needed. The World Health Organization and other public health groups have recommended formal policies aimed at eliminating smoking in the movies (5,6). These policies include awarding an R rating to any movie with smoking or other tobacco-use imagery (with exceptions for portrayal of actual historical figures who smoked or the portrayal of negative effects of tobacco use), certifying that no payments have been received by studios for depicting tobacco use in movies, and ending the onscreen depiction of real tobacco brands. Reducing smoking and tobacco use in youth-oriented movies is not a niche issue. The Surgeon General has concluded that there is a causal relationship between depictions of smoking in movies and smoking initiation among young people, and the US Department of Health and Human Services has set a goal of reducing youth exposure to onscreen smoking (7). Furthermore, among the nationwide goals set by Healthy People 2020, one of the objectives is the reduction of onscreen tobacco use imagery in youth-oriented movies and on television (8). These goals and objectives were set because the population-attributable risk associated with onscreen tobacco imagery is significant (9,10). To assess progress toward the Healthy People 2020 objective, the Office on Smoking and Health at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) will now track and report annually on tobacco use imagery in youth-oriented movies as a core surveillance indicator by using the methods described in previous CDC publications (3,4). These data will be added to regular CDC reports to the public on smoking prevalence among youth and adults, total and per-capita cigarette consumption, and progress on tobacco control policies. One of the major conclusions in the Surgeon General’s 2012 report on preventing tobacco use (2) was that after years of steady progress, declines in tobacco use by youth and young adults have slowed for cigarette smoking and have stalled for smokeless tobacco use (2). Each day in the United States, approximately 3,800 young people younger than 18 years smoke their first cigarette, and approximately 1,000 youth younger than 18 years become daily cigarette smokers (2). More than one-third of these smokers will eventually suffer and die from smoking-related illness. We all have a responsibility to prevent youth from becoming tobacco users, and the movie industry has a responsibility to protect our youth from exposure to tobacco use and other pro-tobacco imagery in movies that are produced and rated as appropriate for children and adolescents. Eliminating tobacco imagery in movies is an important step that should be easy to take.

The Effects of Voluntary Return Programmes on Migration Flows in the Context of the 1973/74 and 2008/09 Economic Crises

The article analyses Spain’s voluntary return policies, including the programme instituted specifically to assist migrants affected by the 2008/09 crisis. Voluntary return policies were implemented in Europe in the context of the 1973/4 crisis. Just like the Western European programmes of the 1970s and the 1980s, the current Spanish voluntary return policies also only elicited the cooperation of small numbers of migrants and countries of origin. The article recommends four broader policy measures to tackle the emerging trend whereby a considerable proportion of migrants will stay in Spain rather than repatriate.

Política de evidenciação de informações do setor público no estado de Minas Gerais

The entities that constitute the structure of Brazilian public administration are required by the Federal Constitution to give account about public resources use and to respect the publicity principle. In that sense, this study aims to examine the voluntary disclosure and mandatory policy which are adopted on the electronic pages of Minas Gerais State and Belo Horizonte municipality, in accordance with the perception of post-graduation students from courses in Accounting and Finance and External Audit from Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais (UFMG). About the procedures, we chose to apply a questionnaire to 820 post-graduation students from Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais in September 2009 and that of the 820 e-mails sent, 217 returned, so they were excluded from the sample. Of the 603 remaining there was obtained a return 66 questionnaires, representing 10.95% of valid addresses and 8,04% of the delimited population (820 contacts). The used questionnaire consisted of four closed questions with dichotomous answers, a question containing information options, which could be found in the State websites and in their residence county, and three questions with a 4-point Likert scale. The results indicated that the most interest information by residents users in Belo Horizonte consisted in seeking legislation concerning the municipality and the State and information relating to works undertaken by public entities. It was also noted that the questionnaire respondents tended to agree that the released informations are insufficient to allow conclusions about the proper implementation of public resources in both the state and the county; and they tend to disagree regarding the state of Minas Gerais and the municipality of Belo Horizonte act in line with what society expects.

Law, Norms, and the Motherhood/Caretaker Penalty

A growing body of empirical research finds that mothers and caretakers experience significant workplace penalties, including negative evaluations, lower pay, and reduced prospects for promotion. Can law reduce these workplace penalties for mothers and caretakers? We present recent theoretical developments and research that uncover the social psychological mechanisms producing these disadvantages. We then discuss our theory and the results of an experimental laboratory study that show how laws prohibiting discrimination against workers who take family leave can eliminate these biases. Drawing on theories from law and society scholars, we contend that law affects society not only through punitive sanctions but also by changing moral judgments. This argument is confirmed by our finding that when the FMLA was made salient to evaluators, the law eliminated not only wage and promotion penalties for mothers and caretakers, but also negative normative judgments of these workers. In contrast, voluntary organizational policies made salient in the same manner produced mixed results, and in some instances increased discriminatory evaluations. These findings indicate that law can mitigate workplace penalties by changing normative judgments about mothers and caretakers, and that the law is more effective than voluntary policies in counteracting the disadvantages caretakers experience.

Corporate Governance and Insider Trading

This paper examines the influence of corporate governance systems on insiders’ ability to profit from their information advantage and the ways through which corporate governance systems influence such ability. We find that corporate governance significantly reduces the profitability of insider sales but not that of insider purchases. Given that sales involve greater legal risk than purchases, the results suggest that well-governed firms restrict informed insider trading mainly to reduce legal risk. We also find that better-governed firms reduce the profitability of insider sales by increasing the likelihood of adopting ex-ante preventive measures (e.g., voluntary insider trading restriction policies), implementing such measures more effectively, and taking ex-post disciplinary actions more actively. These results highlight how better-governed firms are able to restrict insiders from exploiting private information.

Slovenian Employment Policy: ‘Soft’ Europeanisation by Consensus

Slovenian employment policy was subject to ‘soft’ Europeanisation despite the lack of normative resonance between entrenched policy ideas and new policy ideas embedded in the European Union's Employment Strategy. The key mechanisms at work are shown to be voluntary policy transfer and diffusion, rather than strategic use of Europe by key domestic actors to bring about policy change. This article argues that normative resonance is not a necessary condition for ‘soft’ Europeanisation and highlights the importance of other domestic factors, such as norms of consensus-seeking and relative independence from international financial capital as mediating factors that can explain policy impact.

Deportation and the Micropolitics of Exclusion: The Rise of Removals from the UK to Sri Lanka

The forced removal of foreign nationals has been a relatively uncommon occurrence in liberal democracies, at least since the 2nd World War. This can be explained by both the inherent violence of this process, which raises widespread public opposition, and by the geopolitical difficulties it raises, as there must be agreement of both countries concerned. In recent years these problems appear to have been partially overcome and since 2005 a ‘deportation turn’ is evident across the European Union as deportations increase. This paper focuses on the international dimension to this increase, following work investigating deportation as an essentially biopolitical process of international governance of populations. This approach is developed in an analysis of the geopolitical impacts of that management process. The paper uses empirical research with Sri Lankan migrants who left the UK either as a result of force or voluntary returns policies to explain this development. It identifies the changing strategy of the deportation process, particularly recent attention to the negotiation of bilateral and multilateral readmission agreements and the role of international organisations as mediators as key contributions to an explanation for the rise in deportations.

A Short Online Community Readiness Survey for Smoke-Free Policy

Rural residents in the United States are more likely to use tobacco, have less access to tobacco control resources and efforts, and are more highly exposed to secondhand smoke than their urban counterparts. The purpose was to design and pilot test a shortened, self-administered online survey (Community Readiness Survey-Short form [CRS-S]) to assess community readiness for smoke-free policy in rural communities. The Community Readiness Survey-Long form (CRS-L) is a 30- to 90-min telephone-administered survey. The Community Readiness Model can guide the design of programs and policy interventions to reduce health risks. 160 key informants from Wave 3 of a 5-year community-based randomized controlled trial set in Kentucky completed the CRS-L; 61 of approximately 140-284 items were significantly related to the relevant readiness dimension subscores and selected for inclusion. The online CRS-S was created with these items using Qualtrics software; 43 smoke-free advocates who had completed the CRS-L during Wave 4 were invited to participate. Correlations between the CRS-S and the CRS-L on overall readiness and the dimension scores were calculated. Readiness scores were correlated with existence of public policy and voluntary smoke-free policies to assess convergent validity. The correlation between the overall CRS-S and CRS-L scores was relatively strong (.82), and there is evidence to support convergent validity. Most respondents completed the CRS-S in less than 15 min and preferred this format. The CRS-S is a valid and less time- and resource-intensive method to assess readiness for smoke-free policy in rural communities.

Voluntary Disclosure vs. Mandatory Disclosure: The Case of IFRS Introduction on European Firms

The purpose of this study is to determine if the process of filtering out the financial information voluntary disclosed by firms is modified by the introduction of new mandatory information requirement. Voluntary information disclosed by French firms during the 2003-2008 period is compiled. This original dataset includes several years both before and after the introduction of the IFRS in the European Union in 2005. We use regression analysis to identify the determinants and consequences of the communications policies of listed firms. Particularly, we show that highly communicative firms may reduce the information asymmetry as measured by the dispersion of analysts’ earnings forecasts when they voluntarily disclose information. The level of voluntary disclosure and earnings forecasts by analysts are endogenous and exhibit a complex two-way relationship. Voluntary communication policies did not change with the introduction of the IFRS.

VOLUNTARY PRIVATE HEALTH INSURANCE AMONG THE OVER 50s IN EUROPE

Using data from Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE), we investigate the determinants of voluntary private health insurance (VPHI) among the over 50s in 11 European countries and their effects on healthcare spending. First, we find that the main determinants of VPHI are different in each country, reflecting differences in the underlying healthcare systems, but in most countries, education levels and cognitive abilities have a strong positive effect on holding a VPHI policy. We also analyse the effect of holding a voluntary additional health insurance policy on out-of-pocket (OOP) healthcare spending. We adopt a simultaneous equations approach to control for self-selection into VPHI policy holding and find that, only in the Netherlands, VPHI policyholders have lower OOP spending than the rest of the population, whereas in some countries (Italy, Spain, Denmark and Austria), they spend significantly more. This could be due to not only increased utilisation but also cost-sharing measures adopted by the insurers to counter the effects of moral hazard and to keep adverse selection under control.

Benefits of a Registration Policy for Microenterprise Performance in India

This paper evaluates the effects of a voluntary registration policy with government authorities on financial performance of urban microenterprises in the Indian manufacturing sector. Using data from the 2006 World Bank survey of Indian microenterprises and applying the semi-parametric propensity score matching technique, we find that being registered leads to significant gains in sales per employee and value added per employee. Large gains are also noted for male-owned firms, those operating with or without paid labor and those operating outside of the owner’s home.

Australian carbon biosequestration and bioenergy policy co-evolution: mechanisms, mitigation and convergence

Summary The intricacies of international land-use change and forestry policy reflect the temporal, technical and political difficulty of integrating biological systems and climate change mitigation. The plethora of co-existing policies with varied technical rules, accreditation requirements, accounting methods, market registries, etc., disguise the unequal efficacies of each mechanism. This work explores the co-evolution and convergence of Australian voluntary and mandatory climate-related policies at the biosequestration—bioenergy interface. Currently, there are temporal differences between the fast-evolving and precise climate-change mechanisms, and the long-term ‘permanence’ sought from land use changes encouraged by biosequestration instruments. Policy convergence that favours the most efficient, appropriate and scientifically substantiated policy mechanisms is required. These policies must recognise the fundamental biological foundation of biosequestration, bioenergy, biomaterial industrial development and other areas such as food security and environmental concerns. Policy mechanisms that provide administrative simplicity, project longevity and market certainty are necessary for rural and regional Australians to cost-effectively harness the considerable climate change mitigation potential of biological systems.

Better Safe than Sorry: The Influence of Corporate Counsel on Management Earnings Forecasts

This study examines the role attorneys play on their firms’ voluntary disclosure policy. Our study is made possible by a unique dataset of corporate counsel employed by U.S. public corporations, which covers 25 percent of firms listed on Compustat (50 percent by total assets). We examine the relation between the number of attorneys a firm employs and the likelihood the firm issues a management earnings forecast, the number of forecasts issued, and the forecast error. We find that firms with more attorneys are less likely to issue management earnings forecasts, issue fewer forecasts, and forecast lower levels of earnings relative to actual earnings. These results hold even after controlling for the risk of litigation and considering endogeneity in the choice to hire attorneys. Our results suggest that attorneys play an important and under-researched role in firms' disclosure choices. As such, it is relevant to current debates about the role of corporate counsel in determining firm accounting choices.

Association Between Smokefree Laws and Voluntary Smokefree-Home Rules

More states and localities are passing restrictions on smoking in public places and workplaces. To determine what, if any, association exists between enactment of strong laws making public places or workplaces smokefree on adoption of voluntary smokefree-home policies, particularly whether such laws are associated with increased smoking at home. Logistic regressions were used to estimate the OR of a person living with a 100% smokefree-home rule as a function of individual characteristics, household composition, and whether or not the residential region is covered by clean indoor air laws. The data came from successive waves of the Tobacco Use Supplement to Current Population Survey (TUS-CPS) for the years 1992-2007, and the American Nonsmokers' Rights Foundation database of state and local government clean indoor air laws. Analysis was conducted in 2010 and 2011. Living in a county fully covered by a 100% clean indoor air law in workplaces or restaurants or bars is associated with an increased likelihood of having a voluntary 100% smokefree-home rule both for people living with smokers (OR=7.76, 95% CI=5.27, 11.43) and not living with smokers (OR=4.12, 95% CI=3.28, 5.16). Strong clean indoor air laws are associated with large increases in voluntary smokefree-home policies both in the homes with and without smokers. These results support the hypothesis of norm spreading of clean indoor air laws.