Is the Sustainable Slopes Program (SSP) a symbolic, self-regulatory scheme that allows its participants to improve their green reputation without actually improving their environmental protection performance? If so, the SSP may be an effective avoidance strategy that has allowed the US ski industry to resist the adoption – by the US Forest Service (USFS) – of stricter environmental regulations discussed in the previous chapter of this book. This chapter aims to help to address these issues by focusing on two general research questions: are voluntary programs effective in promoting higher environmental performance by participant firms? If so, which distinct areas of environmental performance are more likely to be improved by firms joining a voluntary environmental program? We tackle these questions by assessing the implementation of the ski industry's Sustainable Slopes Program in the western United States between 2001 and 2005.

For some time now, public policy and management scholars have been interested in identifying mechanisms that encourage environmental protection by businesses. Public policies, in terms of environmental regulations, monitoring, penalties, institutional norms, and economic incentives, have historically been identified as positively related to regulatory compliance.

Recently, these factors have also been identified with an increased likelihood of participation in voluntary environmental programs (VEPs) that seek to promote proactive corporate environmental protection in more flexible and cost-efficient ways (Carmin et al., 2003; Delmas and Toffel, 2004; Khanna, 2001; King and Lenox, 2000; Rivera, 2004). Indeed, many of the George W. Bush's administration environmental policies were predicated upon VEP-type programs.