Journal of Business and Behavioral Sciences Volume 23, Number 1 issn 1946-8113 Spring 2011 inthis issue

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The study used a descriptive research design to address the following issues raised in focus group interviews and the literature review.

• 
  What are opinions of marketing executives toward the EPA policy?
  
• 
  Can firms specify barriers that adversely affect their response to the EPA policy upon EN-product innovation?
  

1. 
   EPA regulatory time pressures leading to nonoptimal innovations;
   
2. 
   Prohibitively high costs of complying with EPA regulations;
   
3. 
   Unclear scope or implications of EPA regulations;
   

5. 
   Inability or unwillingness of agency to modify EPA regulations in view of altered circumstances;
   
6. 
   Disagreement within the agency about the application and meaning of EPA regulations;
   
7. 
   Inconsistency over time in the agencies application of EPA regulations;
   
8. 
   Inability of firm to develop or allocate the resources necessary to comply with EPA regulations;
   

Apaiwongse

9. Conflicts and inconsistencies between EPA regulations;

10. 
    Inability of firm to meet prescribed deadlines in EPA regulation;
    
11. 
    Lack of mechanism within the agency for explaining EPA regulations;
    
12. 
    Lack of effective appeal procedure;
    
13. 
    Differential treatment by the agency affected by the EPA regulations; and
    
14. 
    Unwillingness of the agency to explain EPA regulations.
    

The study compares uncertainty attributes, as viewed by both marketing executives and environmental officers. The basis for constructing the questionnaire to measure uncertainty was theoretically grounded in the work of some organizational theorists. Factor analysis is employed to identify the key dimensions of the perceived policy uncertainty. Three orthogonal factors were generated. Those factors (or attributes) are: [1] Lack of Knowledge Concerning Outcomes, Predictions and Expectations; [2] Ambiguity of the Regulation and Delayed Feedback; and [3] Lack of Enough Information for Decision Making.

The three interactions of the above uncertainty attributes with the adoption decision for new EN-Product innovations were all shown to be substantively and statistically significant. The attribute which has the greatest impact on innovation decision is "Lack of Knowledge Concerning Outcomes, Predictions and Expectations," followed by "Lack of Enough Information for Decision Making." The uncertainty attribute "Ambiguity of the Regulation and Delayed Feedback" seemed to have the least impact on innovation adoption.

STUDY RESULTS: The findings from the personal interview indicate the

following impact of uncertainty on the EPA policy on industrial innovation:

1. As a constraint, a marketing executive's perceived degree of uncertainty
regarding the environmental policy will affect the marketing decision to innovate
new environmentally-related products [EN-Products].

2. EPA's inability to provide clear information on the revision of the

3. Environmental regulations are ambiguous to the point that they affect

4. The environmental regulations are not flexible enough to promote new EN-

5. The firm's ability to determine whether a new EN-Product will be approved or

6. The available information about conflicts and inconsistencies among

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The findings do indicate that the EPA regulations impose considerable direct and indirect barriers to the decision to adopt new EN-Product innovations. There appear to be two main areas of impact through regulation on industrial firms. The first is that members of many marketing centers perceived the unclear and ambiguous content of the environmental regulation as posing a significant barrier to its adoption of new innovation. The second is related to such problems of uncertainty as lack of information, inability to predict the result from the decision to innovate a new environmentally related products, and confusion concerning how to meet the expectation of the government regulation and regulators.

The views expressed in both the marketing executives, government agencies, and environmental marketing journals are crucial to provide insight into issues explored in the questionnaire. The questionnaire was constructed by modifying these viewpoints to take the form of structured queries.

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The results of this study point to some interesting findings as well as important implications for public policy decision makers. The study compared uncertainty attributes. The attribute which has the greatest impact on the adoption attitude is "Lack of Knowledge Concerning Outcomes, Predictions and Expectations," followed by "Lack of Enough Information for Decision Making." The uncertainty attribute "Ambiguity of the Policy and Delayed Feedback" seems to have the least impact on the adoption attitude. The findings indicate that the EPA regulations impose substantial direct and indirect barriers to the decision toward the adoption of EN-Product innovations. There appears to be two main areas of impact through regulation on firms. The first is that when marketing executives perceive the EPA policy as unclear and ambiguous, this creates a significant unfavorable attitude toward innovation decision. The second is related to such uncertainties as lack of information, inability to predict the result from the decision to innovate EN-Products, and confusion concerning how to meet the expectation of the government regulation and regulators.

The findings have important practical implications. The trade-off between costs and benefits of each regulatory alternative could be emphasized

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for the best regulatory selection. The market perceptions about the comparative benefits and costs of different EPA regulations, both regulatory alternatives and the traditional command-and-control regulation, could present an opportunity favoring the innovation decision. The relative advantages of a specific EPA regulation compared to other regulatory alternatives could be highlighted.

Additionally, if government regulatory agencies are involved in the information-yielding process, they, too, can enhance business's ability to make the more rational choice (as in the EPA regulatory concept). The more rational choice is one that reduces non-monetary as well as monetary costs. These include frustrations, unpredictable results from proposal submission, government paperwork and bureaucracy, and needless delay. When such information exchange exists, business executives would realize a reduction in uncertainty. Market transaction can be made more efficient when both the business firms (or buyers) and government agencies (or sellers) understand the full costs and benefits associated with the transactions they undertake.

Moreover, the diffusion theory postulates that adoption of a new innovation requires continuous guidance to industrial organizations during the innovation adoption process. This two-step process consists of an initiation phase and an implementation phase. In the marketing of the business and government alternative for the EPA policy, the diffusion theory would involve a firm's awareness of the regulatory alternatives and its advantages, as well as the development of favorable executives' attitudes toward the innovation. This would be followed by the firm's search for necessary regulation information prior to the submission of a policy proposal for EN-Product innovations to the USEPA. The success of the process is partly influenced by the individual member's regulation-information processing activities and the amount of, as well as the quality of, regulation information available. As the present study indicates, marketing executives generally recognize the conflicts, confusions, and inconsistencies between and/or lack of practicality in federal and state laws concerning environmental standards and measures. These uncertainties cause both inaction in the adoption of new innovative products and increased operating and investment risks. Therefore, industry must request clear information from the government agencies about comparative costs and benefits, risks and social effects, and other data connected with the command-control and voluntary EPA alternative options. When the agency provides such material, and industry then utilizes it for deciding the advantages and disadvantages of EPA policy choice, industry would then become convinced that the voluntary alternative is the attractive option. Industry could then communicate much better with the agency, and the result would be the development of mutual credibility and trust (Apaiwongse 2007a).

Generally, then, the value of the information-exchange process may be measured by the capacity of the regulation-related information to reduce perceived uncertainty among firms. The credibility and the reputation of the

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government agency and its representatives may grow if the information-exchange takes place. The problems of government intervention in private enterprise could be alleviated by encouraging information flow among federal, state, and local government agencies and business. Representatives of the government agencies and marketing executives would realize that open channels of communication and mutual trust and understanding between them are essential and possible. Without such understanding and trust, innovative public policies for adoption decision are less likely to be responsive to the real issues at hand and would be exceedingly difficult to implement.

An incidental uncertainty (or cost) and benefit of this entire process of adopting the innovative products, therefore, would be the encouragement of continuing and productive interchange between representatives of government agencies and business in order to arrive at mutually reinforcing policies and actions.

Finally, the findings imply that marketing executives must be flexible to cope with varying levels of complexity and uncertainty associated with regulatory choices. The rapid development of regulatory alternatives left a communication void not only between government regulators and business firms (Apaiwongse 2007b), but also among marketing executives as well. All marketing executives could then be made aware of the critical need to accept voluntary alternatives. In order to improve attitudes toward and awareness of the new innovation decision, formal communication networks between business and government as well as among marketing members must be flexible and informal as well as open networks of communication must be established which encourage coordination as a team unit among other things.

Some major directions can be suggested for future research. These directions consist of theoretical and methodological considerations. First, this research suggests that interpersonal relationships within marketing decision units should have a strong impact on innovation decision. The nature and frequency of interpersonal communications among marketing members is the main variable which may be explored in future research. The study of interpersonal communication networks would require more rigorous methods of data collection than mail surveys. Additionally, the communication networks among company executives and government regulators should be emphasized in future studies, especially in the area of negotiating marketing. The interaction processes between the two dyads may then be considered.

Second, the company process of adopting government regulations should be viewed as a complex process rather than as a dichotomous state. Longitudinal surveys of different regulatory alternatives would allow valid analysis of causal processes involved in measuring adoption attitude and innovation decision. As indicated earlier, the innovation process may be focused on the studies of

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Journal of Business and Behavioral Sciences

Fourth, the presence of several interaction effects suggests that the desired hypotheses may need to be modified by bringing in other relevant variables directly into the formulations. For example, demographic variables attached to marketing decision units (such as size, type of industry, and so on) may improve the ability to predict speed of innovation process. Fifth, predictive ability could be improved using multiple responses within a marketing executives as well as marketing decision units together with consensus measures. However, the complexity of the consensus measures and the current stage of scientific knowledge do not allow any single investigation to suffice. Sixth, empirical research regarding the impact of regulation on innovation requires the evaluation of many factors, and is difficult to observe because the innovation process involves many parties and takes time. For instance, not only government agencies and businesses, but also the third parties (i.e., public citizen groups, environmental groups, local citizens in the affected communities, etc.) are relevant actors in this process. Then, one future research direction may focus on the answer to the question of what role, if any, should third parties or the public play to influence this innovation process for EN-Products.

Finally, there is a need for more research into different uncertainty types of government regulations (or regulatory alternatives) in order to increase understanding of the specific factors that affect attitudes toward new innovations. Research findings could be compared and constructed to determine the amount and type of generalization across government regulations and alternatives that are justified.

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Apaiwongse, Tom Suraphol (2009), "Ecological Market Exchange for Current Green Policy: The Parallel-Political Marketplace Approach," Journal of Business and Behavioral Sciences, Vol. 21, No. 1, 5-17.

Apaiwongse, Tom Suraphol (2008), "Barriers of EPA Voluntary Policy upon Market Innovations: An Exploratory Qualitative Approach," Journal of Business and Behavioral Sciences, Vol. 19, No. 2, 11-21.

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