The role of the public administrations in the promotion of the environmental activity in Spanish industrial companies

Abstract An aim of this study is to analyse the managers’ opinions in relation to the environmental policy instruments that the Public Administrations promote in order to force firms to care for the natural environment. In the same way, we study the relation between the perceived importance of these instruments and the level of collaboration between the Public Administrations and firms in this area. Taking into consideration the fact that in Spain firms are still in a relatively incipient stage from an environmental standpoint, we analyse how these instruments are assessed by managers of Spanish industrial firms. Besides, we study whether several opinions are one of the causes of less collaboration in environmental public programs. We show that the tightening of the legislation in the environmental area induces a deeper consciousness among companies about the environmental problem. Because of this, and despite having other instruments, the Public Administrations should legislate and enforce the legislation as a first measure of environmental control. Afterwards, we were able to confirm that there does not exist any relation between the importance of the administrative instruments and the perception of the efficacy of these on the part of the managers, as they are being implemented nowadays. We also confirm that there are no significant differences in the judgement of the importance–efficacy relation among those companies that maintain different type of relations with the Public Administrations in the environmental field. This result allows us to arrive at the conclusion that, in spite of the differences between the importance and the efficacy that the companies attach to the administrative instruments, these differences do not influence the type of relations that the companies maintain with the Public Administrations in the environmental field. Therefore, it seems that these relations depend on other factors, perhaps the level of information of the companies about the public programs or about the necessary resources to have access to them.

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