Lost and found in translation

One of the most valuable things of research trips is that it makes me reflect on my earlier work. And it makes that have I to sharpen and polish the narrative about the key findings of that work.   In my previous blog post I have shared the presentation that I gave at the International...

New insights on voluntary environmental programmes

  I’m getting more and more excited about the possibilities of fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA). Last week I have analysed a set of 35 cases that I have studied in Australia, the Netherlands, and the United States. All these are examples of voluntary environmental programmes that seek to improve the environmental and resource...

Why we should not expect too much from voluntary programmes

Over the last weeks I have analysed my data in further depth. That was pretty exciting to do because it was the first time that I could contrast all the theoretical expectations that underlie my research with the data collected over the last three years. It was further exciting to carry out these analyses because...

Benchmarking building environmental performance: What can we learn from LEED?

    In my last post I questioned whether Green Star has caused the green building revolution the GBCA claims it has. I conclude that the ‘revolution’ is very much contained to the high-end of the office market in Australia’s central business districts. In this contribution I will look at Green Star’s big sister in the...

Trends in governance for urban sustainability and resilience

Oops! More than a month without blog entries. But some good new since the last entry: based on a book-outline and two sample chapters Cambridge University Press has expressed their initial and conditional (etc, etc) interest in the manuscript. I will send them the full manuscript for review once done, which is hopefully by June...

The role of government in voluntary programs

Voluntary programs are to policy makers what a Christmas presents are to children (and adults alike, for that matter). A voluntary program seeks to stimulate people to voluntarily improve their behaviour beyond governmental regulation. For instance, well-known best of class building benchmarking tools such as LEED, BREEAM and Green Star challenge developers to build buildings...