In recent years, International Political Economy literature on “politics beyond state” has emphasized the role of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in broader policy processes, both national and international. In addition to their impact on states, NGOs influence the policies of non-state actors such as firms via public and private politics. Dissatisfied with the progress firms have made in response to public regulation, NGOs have sponsored private authority regimes in several issue areas and pushed firms to participate in them. Across the world, the contest between NGOs and firms has provoked substantial behavioral and programmatic change'including widespread participation in these private authority regimes'among firms seeking to escape NGO pressures. Using firm-level data, this paper examines why direct targeting has not led firms in the U.S. forest products sector to participate in an NGO-sponsored private authority regime, the Forest Stewardship Council. This global regime has been adopted widely in Europe, but U.S.-based forestry firms have tended to favor a domestic industry-sponsored regime, the Sustainable Forestry Initiative. Our analysis suggests that the desire of firms to maintain control over their institutional environment in light of hostile relations with NGOs has led US-based firms to favor the Sustainable Forestry Initiative.

The decision to adopt a potentially profitable but unfamiliar conservation technology is cast in a multi-period Bayesian framework. Specifically, dairy farmers who are both risk-averse and susceptible to peer group influence progressively learn about the true impact of adopting reduced phosphorus dairy diets on their income distributions as they repeatedly experiment with this new technology. Empirically calibrated simulations are used to examine the effects of a voluntary green payment program on the rate of technological diffusion. Results suggest that (a) green payments can accelerate learning and produce significant, permanent changes in behavior relatively quickly and for a reasonable cost; (b) shorter contracts offering larger incentives may be more cost-effective when learning plays an important role in behavioral change; and (c) unknown prior beliefs can reduce the efficacy of a green payment program, implying efforts to verify these priors or to ensure against them by increasing the payment level may be worthwhile.