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Chapter 6’s discussion of the outcomes of information-based governance strategies begins with a comparison of three initiatives that evaluate electronics products – ENERGY STAR, EPEAT, and TCO. It introduces different conceptions of effectiveness, and emphasizes that different actors may have different definitions and perceptions of effectiveness. The chapter discusses a range of hypotheses and evidence related to the effects of information on consumers, businesses, government agencies, advocacy organizations, and researchers. While some evidence shows that a few existing programs have indeed created tangible social and environmental benefits, the database of 245 cases reveals that the vast majority of information-based governance strategies have failed to provide such information about their effectiveness to the public. The chapter ends with a discussion of promising and problematic practices for tracking the environmental outcomes and benefits of information-based governance strategies.

Institutions are often viewed as moving targets for the media and other critics. This chapter summarizes some of the controversies surrounding U.S. institutions of higher learning. Future considerations are also examined along with a discussion of how risk management can help to deal with problems facing U.S. institutions of higher education.

In this chapter, the background to the EU Kids Online project's policy objectives is reviewed and the principal recommendations that emerged from the findings highlighted. The focus is primarily on Europe and policy actions framed at a European level and/or implemented within member states of the European Union. Against a background of intense debate regarding the effectiveness of self-regulatory regimes as mechanisms for online child protection, the chapter examines gaps in policy formulations for internet safety, asking whether current policy is effective and how policymakers can address future challenges in an area that continues to evolve and become more complex.

This chapter looks at the advocacy groups that emerged as a result of IBM's contamination in Endicott. It specifically highlights three groups: the Citizens Acting to Restore Endicott's Environment (CARE), the Residents Action Group of Endicott (RAGE), and the Western Broome Environmental Stakeholders Coalition (WBESC), the only remaining group active today. The founders of these groups were severely affected by the TCE contamination as their relatives suffered from illnesses caused by it. While public health has always been a concern, the WBESC has focused much of its recent efforts on the occupational health of former employees of IBM who worked at the Endicott plant, the place with the most concentration of TCE. The chapter also looks at local activism in relation to and in tension with the environmental justice frame and movement as the advocacy groups remain devoid of any environmental justice discourse or intentionality.

Ibo van de Poel claims that there is substantial disagreement about the exact conception of sustainability even if there is general agreement on its desirability. We should see sustainability as a “compounded” value (not a mere technical issue) that consists of intergenerational justice, intragenerational justice, and care for nature. These values often conflict. The three most common ways of dealing with value conflicts are through life cycle analysis (which compares and aggregates multiple environmental impacts into one measure), respecification (which identifies higher-order and less controversial values to be specified into a design), or innovation (which develops new options that meet all design requirements). Usually value conflicts are can be handled by specifications of shared values or by new innovations. Van de Poel recommends a “values hierarchy” that organizes conflicting interpretations of a specific project in order to determine the available design options. He proposes “value dams” and “value flows” to manage conflicts among stakeholders, who might have different conceptions of sustainability. A value dam would prevent those design features that are strongly opposed by at least one or more stakeholders, and a value flow would promote design requirements that fit a number of different conceptions of sustainability.