Pollution control agreements in Japan: conditions for their success

A Pollution Control Agreement (PCA) is typically an agreement made between a local government and a business with regard to the environmental measures of the business. It can be regarded as a kind of voluntary approach (VA). In preceding case studies, it was found that PCAs played a larger role in reducing sulfur oxides emissions than other policy instruments. To clarify the actual situations of PCAs, two questionnaire surveys were conducted. Upon analysis, it was found that PCAs were used differently by local governments of different scales and confirmed that traditional industrial pollution problems had been controlled to a large extent by PCAs. It is argued in this article that the difference between voluntary and mandatory instruments is the difference of their introduction process. Furthermore, the features of PCAs are investigated by comparing them with other policy instruments that differ from PCAs in this respect. It is concluded that the main strong points of PCAs are the ability to gain residents’ understanding of new locations and operations of business, the flexibility to adapt regulation to the financial conditions of businesses, and that they stem from their individuality of negotiation, conclusion, and implementation. Finally our study on PCAs is compared with other studies on VAs. There it is found that the incentive scheme to motivate businesses to conclude PCAs is different from what other studies found concerning VAs in other countries. Copyright Springer Japan 2007