Market-Based Approaches for Environmental Governance: Exploring the Implementation Gap in Alberta

dc.contributor.advisorBjornlund, Henning
dc.contributor.advisorKwasniak, Arlene J.
dc.contributor.authorKerr, Gillian Loring
dc.contributor.committeememberKnopff, Rainer
dc.contributor.committeememberJackson, Leland J.
dc.date2018-11
dc.date.accessioned2018-05-25T20:47:06Z
dc.date.available2018-05-25T20:47:06Z
dc.date.issued2018-05-23
dc.description.abstractThis research addresses how governments consider and implement policy in Canada. Specifically, it assesses what factors influence policy success by exploring the market-based instrument (MBI) implementation gap in environmental management in Alberta. Due to the increased complexity of environmental issues and increased expectations that non-state actors will have a role in environmental management, the Government of Alberta made many commitments to use MBIs. However, of the 57 MBI commitments made by the Alberta Ministry of Environment (MoE) during the study period, 2000 to 2015, only 13 were implemented and only 7 are uniquely new. Results reveal that the values, beliefs, and behaviours of policy actors, both internal in the MoE and external stakeholders, influence their social acceptance and the institutional fit of MBIs. However, these factors are not reflected in policy design and implementation processes. Observations and interviews with local knowledge experts revealed issues of accountability and legitimacy contribute to the MBI gap. Further, a Q methodology study revealed prevalent social discourses on water management issues and suggested directions for local solutions. Five distinct discourses were identified around water management issues and four distinct discourses on the use of MBIs as solutions. A number of MBI researchers and designers have made assumptions about how people behave based on traditional economics. This study shows that many such design criteria and objectives do not represent how policies are implemented in real-life scenarios, building on economic principles and taking an interdisciplinary approach to understand how and why policy actors behave the way they do. This research suggests a broadening of policy processes to include social acceptability and informal institutional measures to capture important factors that can influence environmental policy success.en_US
dc.identifier.citationKerr, G. L. (2018). Market-based approaches for environmental governance: Exploring the implementation gap in Alberta (Doctoral thesis, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada). Retrieved from https://prism.ucalgary.ca. doi:10.11575/PRISM/31945en_US
dc.identifier.doihttp://dx.doi.org/10.11575/PRISM/31945
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/1880/106678
dc.language.isoeng
dc.publisher.facultyEnvironmental Design
dc.publisher.facultyGraduate Studies
dc.publisher.institutionUniversity of Calgaryen
dc.publisher.placeCalgaryen
dc.rightsUniversity of Calgary graduate students retain copyright ownership and moral rights for their thesis. You may use this material in any way that is permitted by the Copyright Act or through licensing that has been assigned to the document. For uses that are not allowable under copyright legislation or licensing, you are required to seek permission.
dc.subject.classificationEducation--Social Sciencesen_US
dc.subject.classificationEconomicsen_US
dc.subject.classificationPolitical Scienceen_US
dc.subject.classificationEnvironmental Sciencesen_US
dc.subject.classificationEngineering--Environmentalen_US
dc.titleMarket-Based Approaches for Environmental Governance: Exploring the Implementation Gap in Alberta
dc.typedoctoral thesis
thesis.degree.disciplineInterdisciplinary Graduate Program
thesis.degree.grantorUniversity of Calgary
thesis.degree.nameDoctor of Philosophy (PhD)
ucalgary.item.requestcopytrue
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