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The paper explores theories of regulation by examining their consistency and fit with the development of smart regulation, better regulation and self‐regulation. It achieves this through the use of two case studies. Building control is offered as an example of deregulation, the 1980s approach to “smart” regulation, whilst the Primary Authority scheme is provided as an example of current thinking. The paper develops an explanation of how these shifting regulatory architectures have generated current views of how to manage the issue of regulation and then proposes a framework to explain how professional and local authority regulation works and can be made to work better.

Analytical, as a preliminary to testing theoretical constructs by further empirical research. The paper examines case studies to draw out the drivers for regulatory practice and then establishes a model from this as the basis for further work.

The use of Giddens's concept of Late Modernity is useful in describing the loss of authority by traditional regulators and explaining the adoption of “smart” regulation by others seeking to dominate regulation. A lack of theoretical definition as to what is meant by smart regulation can be countered by the development of constructs, such as the regulatory “triptych” developed here.

The development of a structure for professional and local authority regulation allows researchers to place developments in smart regulation in context. It also allows those newly emerging dominant authorities, in Giddens's terms, to be encouraged to develop a higher quality form of regulation.

The paper generates a grounded set of concepts that have explanatory efficacy.

This paper aims to provide an overview of environmental regulation and recent trends and developments in this area, rooted in the practical regulatory implementation activities of EPAs worldwide and drawing connection to sustainability, environmental risks, economics and environmental justice.

The design and methodology in developing “Better (Environmental) Regulation” is addressed drawn on experiences from different regulatory systems. It addresses the linkages between environment, economy, regulation and sustainability and adopts and develops Sparrow's approach to a focus on tackling harms.

A range of challenges in policy and practice terms – e.g. economic growth versus sustainability – is described. Arguments against the political economy convention of reducing burdens are made and a spectrum of compliance for regulators is offered, leading to a proposed agenda to help deliver better regulation generally.

A major challenge in arguing for an anti‐burden approach is the lack of a general ecosystem services approach and the dearth of valuation data to validate industry claims, demonstrate the costs of compliance and non‐environment and the value of protection.

The argument is presented that environmental regulation is of fundamental value not only to the environment per se but to tackling climate change and protecting society at large.

Hitherto there has been very little in the literature from a practitioner perspective, analysing and proposing improvements to environmental regulation in practice while preserving and securing environmental and sustainability policy objectives. This paper should support and encourage policy makers and implementers in improving practice.

European air transport policy, emerged through the confluence of case law and legislation, in four broad areas: liberalization, safety and security, greening, and the external policy. Following the implementation of the single market for air transport, policy shifted to liberalizing and regulating associated services and in recent years to greening, the external aviation policy, and safety and security. Inclusion of air transport in the Environmental Trading Scheme of the European Union exemplifies the European Commission’s proactive stand on bringing the industry in line with emission reduction trajectories of other industries. However, the bid to include flights to third countries in the trading scheme pushed the EU into a controversial position, causing the Commission to halt implementation and to give ICAO time to seek a global multilateral agreement. The chapter also discusses how the nationality clauses in air services agreements breached the Treaty of Rome, and a court ruling to that effect enabled the EC to extend EU liberalization policies beyond the European Union, resulting in the Common Aviation Area with EU fringe countries and the Open Aviation Area with the USA. Another important area of progress was aviation safety, where the EU region is unsurpassed in the world, yet the Commission has pushed the boundary even further, by establishing the European Safety Agency to oversee the European Aviation Safety Management System. Another important area of regulatory development was aviation security, a major focus after the woeful events in 2001, but increasingly under industry scrutiny on costs and effectiveness. The chapter concludes by arguing that in the coming decade, the EU will strive to strengthen its position as a global countervailing power, symbolized in air transport by a leadership position in environmental policy and international market liberalization, exemplified in the EU’s external aviation policy.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse nonprofit regulation through comparing and contrasting mutual-benefit and public-benefit entities. It ascertains how these entities differ in size, publicness, tax benefits and whether these differences might suggest regulatory costs should be differentiated.

This mixed-methods study utilises financial data, submissions and interviews.

There are stark differences in these two types of regulated nonprofit entities. Members should be the primary monitoring agency/ies for mutual-benefit entities, but financial reports should be understandable to these members. Nevertheless, the availability of tax concessions, combined with the benefits of limited liability, suggest mutual-benefit entities should be regulated and monitored by government in a way sympathetic to their size.

As with most research, a limitation is this study’s focus on a single jurisdiction.

The differences in these entities’ characteristics are important for designing regulation.

Better regulation is likely to require a standard set of financial reporting standards. Government has the right to demand disclosures due to benefits mutual-benefit entities enjoy.

In comparison to studies utilising only public-benefit data, this study uses unique data sets to compare public-benefit and mutual-benefit entities and presents nonprofit sector participant’s perceptions of these differences in context. This enables analysis of how better regulation could be achieved.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a better understanding of the mechanisms by which symbolic commitment to self-regulation influences corporate environmental performance through the adoption of substantive actions.

Using a sample of Chinese listed private firms in manufacturing sectors, this paper empirically investigates whether and how corporate symbolic commitment to environmental self-regulation really improves the consequences of corporate activities with respect to environmental issues under the current Chinese context. A moderated mediation analysis is employed to test the hypotheses and examine the relationships proposed in the research framework.

The authors argue that making a commitment to environmental self-regulation could motivate firms to implement effective means of being green. The intriguing and robust results show that firms with higher ranking environmental commitment are more likely to use political connections to obtain resources (green subsidies), and then improve environmental performance.

The results of this study provide a snapshot of the mechanism between symbolic promises and real outcomes.

The authors theorize about and test both direct and indirect effects of commitment to self-regulation on real outcomes which provide empirical evidence for the incipient but growing understanding of self-regulation.

This research explores the relevance of the Austrian tradition within the field of public policy studies. Policy studies is a research field about what governments can do. Austrian economics, conversely, mostly highlights the shortfalls of government intervention: as such overlapping seems limited. However, broadly speaking Austrian principles have indirectly influenced two aspects of policy studies: the conceptualization of the policy cycle as an imperfect process driven by actual individuals with limited knowledge and bounded rationality, and the creation of a regulatory framework that forces policy makers to reflect upon unintended consequences, by using evidence and data. This regulatory framework, assessed in this chapter by reading several regulatory guidelines through Austrian lenses, provides a new window of opportunities for Austrian economics to be relevant in the policy process. Austrian economist can be taking part in the regulatory process and also help select regulatory tools and institutional infrastructures that minimize the unintended consequences of government intervention, while contributing to the definition of social problems that enter the policy agenda from an individualistic perspective.

This paper aims to examine different types of sharing platforms based on risk perceptions of product/service providers and users, and to illustrate appropriate platform regulation preferences.

A survey was used (N = 540) to collect data on platform participants’ risk perceptions and regulation preferences in the Chinese (N = 263) and the US markets (N = 277). Cluster analysis and multiple correspondence analysis were used to categorise platforms and match their regulation preferences with the risk characteristics.

The results show that i) four types of sharing platforms are categorised in terms of the risk perceived by the supply and demand side, and ii) four types of regulation preferences are clustered, drawing on the power and trust elements proposed from the slippery slope framework. Furthermore, coercive power regulation is favoured by participants of platforms with high supply risk and low demand risk, legitimate power regulation is preferred by actors of platforms with low supply risk and high demand risk, reason-based trust regulation is preferred by actors of platforms with high supply and demand risk, and implicit trust regulation is favoured by participants of platforms with low supply and demand risk.

This paper develops an empirical typology of platforms based on risk perceptions of providers and users, and advances our understanding about lateral exchange markets from a consumer perspective.

This paper provides implications for platforms to regulate transactions through two mechanisms – the power of platforms and trust in platform participants.

Regulating by power ensures transaction security while regulating by trust enhances transaction efficiency, so it is important to configure the power and trust elements in platform regulation in an appropriate manner. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is one of the first attempts at addressing platform regulation and shows how consumers’ risk perception of platforms can lead to important implications for theory and practice in marketing and better regulation of platform transactions.

In organizations, it is common to talk about how wisely people manage their emotions. Even so, it is often not obvious whether a particular act of emotion regulation is wise or unwise and, to date, research has provided little guidance to judge the wisdom of emotion regulation efforts. We develop a model that construes wise emotion regulation as a process that involves: (a) setting an effective emotion regulation goal, (b) choosing an appropriate strategy to achieve that goal, (c) implementing that strategy effectively, and (d) adapting emotion regulation over time. We also develop propositions linking emotional intelligence to wise emotion regulation. Finally, we discuss the implications of our model and propositions for research and practice.

This chapter provides comments and suggestions to the lawmaker, and especially to economic policy-makers in the field of the optimal regulatory framework and implementation of sustainable practices. The main findings are as follows: (1) degradation of the rule of law in several European Union (EU) Member States and constant political undermining of the legal institutions represent the main threat for the implementation of sustainable practices and development; (2) the golden regulatory rule of thumb provides that regulatory intervention is suggested merely in cases of market failures under the condition that the costs of such intervention do not exceed the benefits; (3) over-regulation might impede implementation of sustainable practices, distort the operation of the market, undermine productivity, diminish growth and social wealth and consequently also sustainability; (4) efficiency and wealth maximization should be the lawmaker’s leading normative principle in designing the legal framework that will enable effective implementation of sustainable practices; (5) the efficient level of harmonization or subsidiarity of decision-making in the EU urges for a rigorous investigation of costs and benefits of the EU top-down harmonization policies which should lead to a better, efficient vertical allocation of sustainability agenda between EU and the Member States; and (6) The Reflection Paper on Sustainable Development Goals – “Towards a Sustainable Europe in 2030” – represents an effective institutional framework in pursue of the overall sustainability targets.