The administration and management of environmental sustainability initiatives: a collaborative perspective

Abstract

Local climate and energy issues provide fertile ground for collaboration in pursuit of shared goals, yet coordination problems can stymie their achievement. Collaborative networks enable integration of local sustainability initiatives across regions and are one mechanism available to mitigate coordination problems and expand the access of resources to local governments. Building on the Institutional Collective Action framework, we examine the scope of the collaborative networks formed by US cities around issues of climate and energy sustainability. Drawing data from the integrated city sustainability database, our analysis finds that the number of partners a city collaborates with on climate and energy issues is influenced by city administrative capacity and community stakeholder support; on average, cities with greater capacity and more interest group support engage a larger number of partners. These findings have theoretical and practical implications for understanding the use of collaborative networks to resolve coordination and cooperation problems.

Keywords:

• integrated city sustainability database
• governance
• collaborative networks

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. The procedure, in this case, was applied to cities with a population of 50,000 of more. While Rubin originally suggested that five imputed sets is sufficient, we follow van Burren and Groothuis-Oudshoorn (2011, p. 49) more recent suggestion that at least 20 sets of data be imputed.