Ecology and Criminology? Applying the tenets of procedural justice to environmental regulations

Abstract

Criminologists are increasingly investigating the harmful intersections between humans and the natural environment, largely under the green criminology banner. However, most discourses have largely remained at the macro level and empirical tests are limited. The foci of research had been industry, state/national actors or policy discourses and not individuals responding to mandated environmental regulations. Individual actors are especially important in developing countries where environmental regulations can substantially impact citizens’ livelihood opportunities. This research uses the procedural justice framework to understand citizens’ responses to an environmental regulatory body. A team of local researchers conducted face-to-face interviews with citizens affected by environmental regulations in the Banahaw protected landscape in the north-central Philippines to assess their trust and cooperation with the regulatory body. Results demonstrated high reliability for the key procedural constructs of respect, impartiality, voice, and trustworthiness. Path analysis showed that impartiality and voice were significantly related to perceived trustworthiness of the regulatory body and impartiality is directly related to cooperation. The results provide evidence that criminological perspectives are useful in organizing the complex dynamics of laws, enforcement and behavior change that is inherent in environmental regulations.

Keywords

Banahaw conservation criminology environmental conservation environmental management environmental regulations green criminology legitimacy Philippine environment Philippine protected area management board Philippines procedural justice trust and compliance

Introduction

A growing body of research in criminology has examined the intersections between humans and the natural environment (flora, fauna, landscapes, seascapes, water). Particularly, research has focused on the negligent, harmful or criminal use of natural resources, often by corporate actors (Beirne et al., 2008; Lynch and Stretsky, 2003). These discourses have come under many names, most prominently under green criminology (Ballif-Spanvill et al., 2008), but also under conservation criminology (Gibbs et al., 2010) or environmental justice (Bullard, 2000; Zilney et al., 2006) among others and have propelled the highly important global issue of environmental/ecological conservation into the criminological purview.

Notwithstanding, criminological research on conservation and ecology (to distinguish this from environmental criminology—crime in space) has often employed macro-level approaches and critiques and lacks empirical testing (Lynch et al., 2017; Zilney et al., 2006). Lynch et al. (2017) has reasoned that the lack of empiricism in green criminology is possibly the reason why it remains largely at the fringes of crime research and also hinders the adaption of ecological/conservation related inquiries into mainstream criminology (Lynch et al., 2017). Yet, criminology is an inherently multidisciplinary field of study. The theories and perspectives that have been used in criminology to advance knowledge about law and human behavior, enforcement agents and citizen interactions, sanctioning mechanisms and public policy interventions are potentially useful elements that can be tapped to understand the complex dynamics that characterize the human–environment intersections particularly within the environmental regulatory context.

This paper uses a commonly used framework in criminology, procedural justice, to examine perceptions by affected citizens of an environmental enforcement body. Citizens’ actions in many protected land and marine areas in developing countries are significant drivers of compliance behaviors as citizens’ social and livelihood needs are impacted, sometimes significantly, by conservation laws (Catedrilla et al., 2012; Chaigneau and Brown, 2016; Pietri et al., 2009). Striking an appropriate balance between conservation and household needs poses a considerable challenge, as is the case in the Philippines, and calls for individual-level analyses of eco-use behaviors. This individual-level analysis is consistent with most works in criminology and many of its sub-fields and is also consistent with disciplines outside of criminology that study uptake of environmental regulations (Bartel and Barclay, 2011; Catedrilla et al., 2012; Chaigneau and Brown, 2016; Christie et al., 2009; Jagers et al., 2012; Pietri et al., 2009; Valkeapaeae and Karppinen, 2013). This diverges, however, from much of current works in conservation and green criminology where units of analysis used are often groups, organizations, or governments/states, or where studies have assessed policies or philosophical perspectives around environmental harm (Gibbs et al., 2010; Heydon, 2018; White, 2018). While industry compliance to environmental regulations remains a substantial concern in the Philippines and in conservation generally (Gibbs et al., 2010; Hawkins, 1990; Simpson and Piquero, 2002), this paper focuses only on individuals who are recipients of environmental regulations.

This challenge of environmental enforcement and citizen compliance closely parallels citizen-police interactions particularly in the police’s attempt to exact cooperation from citizens. Numerous research on citizen–police interactions have used the procedural justice framework (Bradford et al., 2009; Hinds and Murphy, 2007; Mazerolle et al., 2013; Murphy and Cherney, 2012), and these have generally underscored the importance of citizens’ perceptions of police legitimacy on citizens’ cooperation with law enforcement (Murphy and Barkworth, 2014; Nix et al., 2015; Sunshine and Tyler, 2003; Tyler et al., 2015; Wolfe et al., 2016). Subsequently, many policing agencies have adopted training modules that incorporate elements of procedural justice (fairness, giving citizens the opportunity to voice their opinions) in order to enhance police legitimacy in the eyes of the public and maximize citizen cooperation (Hagan and Hans, 2017; Skogan et al., 2015).

Criminologists can certainly contribute to the body of research in environmental enforcement with the same systematic framework that the discipline has used in general law enforcement policies and practices. In this spirit, this paper will specifically (a) assess the measurement properties of procedural justice constructs when used within the context of environmental enforcement and (b) assess the effects of procedural justice on citizens’ cooperation.

The procedural justice mechanism

Procedural justice specifies the fairness of processes behind a decision made or an outcome allocated (Lind and Tyler, 1988b; Thibaut and Walker, 1975). This fair process is then assumed to influence the judgment of an exchange recipient, regardless of the outcome actually received. Procedural justice purports that fair interactions—where individuals feel respected, their voices are considered, and where they believe authority figures give impartial and fair decisions—increase citizens’ cooperation with authority figures and their acceptance of laws and regulations. Several studies in criminology have shown that citizens who believed their interactions with the police were procedurally fair, regardless of the favorability of the interaction outcome, were more likely to believe in the legitimacy of the police, cooperate, and provide support to authorities (Mazerolle et al., 2013; Molm et al., 2003; Paternoster et al., 1997; Tyler and Fagan, 2008–2009).

Proponents advocate that the procedural justice process is found across all social settings—in interpersonal interactions as well as formal proceedings (Lind and Tyler, 1988b; Molm et al., 2003; Tyler, 1989). Lind and Tyler (1988b; Thibaut and Walker, 1975) originally outlined three mechanisms that are important in a procedurally just interaction: the presence of trust, where intentions of group decision-makers are regarded as good and benevolent; neutrality, where decisions are generally considered unbiased within a group or community and promotes equitable benefits for the group in the long run; and respect, which provides feedback to group actors of their standing or status within a group (Lind and Tyler, 1988b; Tyler, 1989). These elements focus on the relational aspect of procedural justice as opposed to an instrumental model proposed earlier by Thibault and Walker (1975) that emphasized control of the decision-making itself and control of the opportunity to present one’s voice in the decision-making process. The relational model emphasizes how involved parties, which include decision-making authorities and outcome recipients, interact and preserve social relationships within the context of potentially contentious and competing ends. In such contexts, the elements of trust, neutrality and respect become sources of positive attitudes about the decision-makers, the decisions, and the regulations or laws.

Subsequent tests of the procedural justice framework have veered away from the purely instrumental framework originally proposed by Thibault and Walker (1975), or a purely relational framework (Lind et al., 1990). Researchers recognize that aspects of both the instrumental and the relational models are important depending upon context and that judgments of fairness generally include elements from both models (Lind et al., 1990; Lind and Tyler, 1988a; Molm et al., 2003). Recent research identifies key elements of the procedural justice process as respect, neutrality and voice which then influence the recipients’ perceptions of the trustworthiness of the enforcement body (Mazerolle et al., 2014; Nagin and Telep, 2017; Skogan et al., 2015). These three elements include the relational elements of respect and neutrality originally outlined by Lind and Tyler (1988a) and the control element of voice in the decision making process that was originally advocated by Thibault and Walker (1975). Studies have assessed the effects of these main elements of procedural justice across behavioral responses such as compliance to immediate or longer term regulations (Tyler, 2003) but more notably to perceptions of the trustworthiness and legitimacy of police authorities and the law (Barkworth and Murphy, 2015; Bates et al., 2016; Mazerolle et al., 2012; Murphy and Barkworth, 2014; Nix et al., 2015; Rosenbaum et al., 2015).

Within studies of environmental regulations and enforcement, the procedural justice model is rarely utilized. A small number of studies have employed some procedural justice constructs to examine opinions about environmental policies (Ebreo et al., 1996; Valkeapaeae and Karppinen, 2013), and a recent work in green criminology by Heydon (2018) assessed procedural fairness in the Canadian oil sands projects affecting indigenous peoples. Still the framework is not used as a model for understanding justice in regulation allocation, or for assessing cooperation and compliance to environmental regulations.

Procedural justice and environmental regulations

Procedural justice is a potentially useful framework for understanding perceptions of environmental regulations and enforcement because exchanges between stakeholders and enforcement agents entail elements of respect, fairness, trust and compliance behaviors. The interaction dynamic is complex and calls for a framework that can incorporate assessments of fair interactions between the regulators and the regulated recipients. Environmental laws are indeed designed to protect natural resources from adverse use and degradation in order to protect public health, improve the quality of land, water and air, and level the playing field across stakeholders with regard to reaping benefits from these natural resources. Yet the degree of cooperation and compliance to environmental regulations vary markedly within a given area, and more so across broader regions and jurisdictions. The top-down command and control models that have characterized environmental protection strategies for decades (Holling and Meffe, 1996) have generally used macro-level factors such as forest covers (Verburg et al., 2006) or the recovery of threatened species (Mallari et al., 2013) as indicators of compliance and have characteristically pursued the singular goal of conservation, at times to the detriment of livelihood needs (Chechina et al., 2018). While macro indicators of conservation are very useful in detecting and projecting longer term changes, there is increasing awareness of the necessity for a devolved and multisectoral approach to conservation that also includes analysis of decision-making by individual agents and micro-level dynamics and relationships particularly regarding compliance to environmental regulations (Ostrom, 2008; White et al., 2002).

A study by Winter and May (2001) outlined elements of environmental compliance very similar to elements within the procedural justice model. Winter and May (2001) outlined three factors that they found to be key elements in Danish farmers’ compliance to agricultural regulations: the farmers’ awareness of the regulations, normative and social motivations (moral duty and social pressure), and the enforcement style of the inspectors, where coercive styles have negative effects on compliance (Winter and May, 2001). Similarly in explaining why firms comply with environmental laws, Dao and Ofori (2010) classified compliance behavior under two general, though not completely independent models: the rationalist model and the normative model. Rationalist firms comply primarily because of economic self-interest, fearing punishment and backlash for non-compliance (Dao and Ofori, 2010). This model highlights deterrence and enforcement as critical elements for compliance. This is consistent with findings by Jagers et al. (2012) which showed that large fishers (thus, with more to lose economically), were more concerned with deterrence when complying with fishing regulations. Normative compliance, on the other hand, highlights civic responsibilities and societal norms as the primary impetus for compliance. Thus, environmental regulations are viewed as appropriate protection measures, and regulatory actors as legitimate bodies. Social reputation plays a significant role in compliance as well as the perceived fairness of procedures used in implementing regulations (Dao and Ofori, 2010).

As stated earlier, discourses within criminology on regulatory compliance have especially focused on business/corporate actors. The debate by Pearce and Combs (1990, 1991) and Hawkins (1990, 1991) for example, grappled with how regulatory agencies should encourage or enforce compliance by corporations—that is, via persuasion or threat of sanctions. Compliance behavior by individual citizens may follow similar processes as corporate actors, however, a body of knowledge that can provide a framework to better understand compliance to environmental laws is lacking. While procedural justice elements had been sporadically incorporated into these discourses (e.g. Valkeapaeae and Karppinen, 2013; Winter and May, 2001), it had not been used as the functional framework and most empirical work have not been done by criminologists. A framework that allows understanding of why stakeholders (individuals or corporate actors) cooperate and comply with environmental regulations and how abiding behaviors are developed and sustained still needs to be advanced.

Site background

The Philippines is one of only a few countries in the world that was originally densely covered by rainforest and was home to thousands of endemic flora and fauna that represented an array of exceptional biological diversity that was unique in the world (Heaney and Regalado, 1998; Mittermeier et al., 1998 Myers et al., 2000). In their analysis of biodiversity hotspots, Myers et al. (2000) highlighted the Philippines as one of only three regions in the world with very high diversity in a small area, underscoring the necessity for protections. However, this biodiversity is threatened by widespread deforestation, especially due to widespread illegal logging concessions (Chechina et al., 2018; Van Der Ploeg et al., 2011). Since 1992 the Philippines has recognized the necessity for environmental protections and has since passed several environmental protection laws (Hashiguchi et al., 2016; Villamor, 2006). The research site of Banahaw is one of the largest protected areas in the Philippines and covers two mountain ranges and approximately 27,000 acres in the southern region of the main Philippine island of Luzon. The area had been declared a protected zone since 11 December 2009¹ and had been closed to most human activities including trekking except for research purposes and occassional religious observances.² Yet, enforcement and the challenge of conservation in protected zones is complicated by the needs of area residents and indigenous communities for economic livelihood where most depend on forest products for sustenance (Chechina et al., 2018; Goliat and Pasa, 2009). There are also difficulties inherent in policing large park boundaries with little resources in generally difficult terrains (Verburg et al., 2006). Thus, while environmental laws set standards for protections and therefore encourage (or sanction) beneficial transformation in land use utilization, a key component in compliance (as in compliance to laws of behavior) is how these laws are perceived by the regulated, and particularly the delivery of these laws as manifested by the enforcement agents on the ground.

Project methods

The project was conceived collaboratively between the researchers and local Filipino partners after a decade-long partnership. Local non-governmental organizations that work in the Philippines’ protected zones have sought information and potential solutions to the challenges of balancing conservation laws with local residents’ livelihood needs. After several years of consultations and work in the field, the researchers and local partners deemed it appropriate to conduct a survey of citizens within a protected zone. The survey included the main conceptual domains of the procedural justice framework to assess the utility of this framework in understanding citizens’ perceptions of regulations and the regulatory body. It was also an attempt to assess the feasibility of conducting face-to-face interviews across a wide rural landscape. Many of the elements of the survey were taken from Hamm’s Natural Resource Survey that assessed the awareness and opinions of Nebraskans on the Nebraska Game and Parks Commission (Hamm et al., 2016). Hamm assessed several potential bases of trust for the Commission from this survey, specifically the dimensionality of six potential bases of trust which included procedural fairness and dispositional trust (Hamm et al., 2016). Questions taken from Hamm’s et al. (2016) survey were reworded to reflect realities in the Philippine context. For example, instead of questions pertaining to the Nebraska Game and Parks Commission, the survey asked about the Protected Area Management Board (PAMB) of the Banahaw protected landscape. PAMBs are local regulatory bodies that are given the responsibility and the authority by the Philippine government to enforce national environmental regulations and follow an environmental management plan for their specific protected area. All protected areas in the Philippines have their own appointed PAMBs that create local regulations based upon broad national laws. These regulatory bodies are typically comprised of representatives from the local and municipal governments, an appropriate non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and representatives from indigenous communities in the area when applicable.

The main elements of procedural justice included in the survey were respect, neutrality/impartiality and voice. Consistent with the tenets of procedural justice, these elements are expected to significantly impact citizens’ views of PAMB’s trustworthiness. Respect represents residents’ views of the Protected Area Management Board’s (PAMB or Board from here onward) treatment of them and other residents in the area. Four survey questions were used to represent this concept (see Table 1) such as “Banahaw PAMB respects citizens’ rights” or “PAMB treats people with dignity, even in disagreement.” Response set ranged from 1 “strongly disagree” to 6 “strongly agree.” Impartiality represents residents’ views of the neutrality and fairmindedness of PAMB particularly with regard to preferential treatment of the rich and special interest groups in the community, characteristics that are illustrative of regrettably many governmental agencies in the Philippines (Batalla, 2015). Four questions were used to represent this concept such as “PAMB is overly influenced by interest groups.” Response set ranged from 1 “strongly disagree” to 6 “strongly agree.” Voice represents residents’ views of PAMB’s willingness to be influenced by their opinions and concerns. Four questions were used to represent this concept such as “PAMB listens to the opinions of the people it regulates” or “citizens can influence decisions of PAMB.” Again the response set ranged from 1 “strongly disagree” to 6 “strongly agree.” As mentioned earlier, respect, impartiality and voice are expected to significantly influence citizens’ views of PAMB’s trustworthiness. Trustworthiness, the residents’ views of the uprightness and worthwhile goals of PAMB was measured using three items. Similar to the above measures, the response set ranged between 1 “strongly disagree” and 6 “strongly agree” (see Table 1 for all the items comprising these constructs). Trustworthiness here is treated similarly as the construct of legitimacy often used in policing research (Sunshine and Tyler, 2003; Wolfe et al., 2016). Legitimacy had been conceptualized as citizens’ views of law enforcement as inherently trustworthy or upright such that citizens feel the moral and ethical obligation to abide by or provide deference to authority figures (Tyler, 2003; Wolfe et al., 2016) out of trust in the legitimacy of their purpose and the process by which they achieve this purpose.

Table 1.

Procedural justice variables.

Procedural justice constructs	Minimum	Maximum	Mean	SD	Kurtosis	Skewness
Respect
Banahaw PAMB respects citizen rights	1.0	6.0	4.2	1.3	−0.5	0.7
I was treated fairly by PAMB	1.0	6.0	4.1	1.3	−0.4	0.7
Members of PAMB treat people with respect	2.0	6.0	4.2	1.2	−0.8	0.4
PAMB treats people with dignity, even in disagreement	2.0	6.0	4.0	1.0	−0.7	0.6
Impartiality
PAMB considers the rights of farmers and residents	1.0	6.0	5.0	1.3	−0.5	−0.7
PAMB is overly influenced by special interest groups	1.0	6.0	3.0	1.3	−1.1	0.3
PAMB decisions are biased toward the rich	1.0	6.0	4.0	1.4	−1.1	−0.2
Philippine environmental laws generally favors some groups	1.0	6.0	4.0	1.4	−1.3	−0.2
Voice
PAMB listens to opinions of the people it regulates	1.0	6.0	4.0	1.2	−0.7	−0.4
Citizens can influence decisions of PAMB	2.0	6.0	4.4	1.1	−0.2	−0.8
Residents have say in important PAMB decisions	2.0	6.0	4.2	1.2	−0.7	−0.5
Philippine environmental laws consider opinions of the people	2.0	6.0	3.8	1.2	−0.9	−0.2
Philippine environmental consider the rights of individuals	1.0	6.0	4.0	1.2	−0.5	−0.5
Trustworthiness
Decision makers care about residents	1.0	6.0	3.9	1.3	−1.1	−0.4
PAMB created out of care for Philippine forests	1.0	6.0	4.6	1.2	1.2	−1.3
PAMB is trustworthy	1.0	6.0	4.0	1.2	−0.1	−0.5
Dependent variable
Cooperation
Always obey laws/regulations of PAMB	1.0	5.0	3.6	0.9	1.6	−1.1
I generally obey environmental regulations	2.0	5.0	4.1	0.6	1.3	−0.4
It is sometimes necessary to break laws of PAMB (reversed)	1.0	6.0	3.0	1.0	−0.3	0.6

SD: standard deviation; PAMB: protected area management board.

N = 76.

Besides trustworthiness, cooperation is also measured. Cooperation here is represented by three items “I always obey the laws/regulations of PAMB,” ‘I generally obey environmental regulations,’ and “It is sometimes necessary to break the laws of PAMB (reversed).” Both trust and cooperation/compliance (obeying authority agents such as the police) have been used in prior research to unitarily represent legitimacy (Gau, 2011, 2014; Wolfe et al., 2016). However evidence has found trust and compliance/cooperation to be distinct constructs (Gau, 2011, 2014). Specifically, Gau (2011) used confirmatory factor analysis to test for the convergent and discriminant validity of procedural justice constructs and found that trust loaded into the legitimacy subscale but that the obligation to obey (cooperation) stood as its own construct. In the same vein in this research, to more clearly see how these constructs may be different from each other, cooperation was created as a separate subscale from trustworthiness.

Survey questions were translated from English into Tagalog, the national language of the Philippines and the prominent language spoken in the study area. This translated version was then retranslated into English by a person who had never been exposed to the original questionnaire. The original and the retranslated versions were almost verbatim, creating confidence in the similarity of meanings between the English and the Tagalog versions of the questionnaire.

A convenience³ sample of citizens and stakeholders were interviewed face-to-face across five municipalities surrounding the protected area of Bahanaw. The five municipalities were chosen because of their proximity to the investigator’s main contact person in the area. An average of three interviewers were dispersed across a municipality to get a potentially diverse set of opinions about environmental regulations and the PAMB. A total of 76 interviews were completed in the course of eight interview days in the field.

Analytic plan

The first goal in this research is to assess the measurement properties of the procedural justice constructs of respect, impartiality, voice and trustworthiness within the environmental regulatory milieu. Reliability analysis using Cronbach’s alphas and exploratory factory analyses (EFA) are used to assess measurement properties. Depending upon the results of this first step (i.e. reasonable factors and reliability measures), the relationship between the constructs is then assessed. Procedural justice theory states that respect, impartiality and voice are the main drivers of citizens’ perceptions of agency/enforcement trustworthiness. Thus, the next step assesses this relationship using ordinary least squares regression. The second goal assesses the effects of procedural justice (respect, impartiality, voice and trustworthiness) on citizen cooperation. For this assessment, a path model was tested. While ideally a confirmatory factor model can readily test the two goals above and is appropriate given possibilities of shared variances across the constructs, the small number of cases in this sample did not allow for this test. Path analysis, however, is used because it also takes into consideration the shared variances across variables (although not simultaneously).

Results

All the constructs are outlined in Table 1. The means, skewness and kurtosis are all in the normal ranges with centrality of distributions also at normal ranges. The measurement properties of key constructs are outlined in Table 2. Results show that the procedural justice constructs of respect, impartiality/fairness, voice and trustworthiness have high Cronbach’s alphas at .86., .79, .87 and .87, respectively. This indicates unidimensionality for each of the constructs used. Exploratory factor analysis using varimax rotation also produced reasonable factors for items comprising each construct. Factor loadings for respect ranged between .7 and .9, between .67 and .85 for impartiality, between .7 and .8 for voice, and between .87 and .9 for trustworthiness. The dependent variable of cooperation has factor loadings between .6 and .7 (see Table 2). Reliable scales translate into useful constructs that can then be used in statistical models. Thus, to better understand which exchange relationship has influence on citizens’ perceptions of PAMB trustworthiness, the relationship between the constructs of respect, impartiality and voice on trustworthiness was examined.

Table 2.

Measurement properties of procedural justice constructs.

	Cronbach’s alpha
Procedural justice constructs
Respect	0.864
Banahaw PAMB respects citizen rights
I was treated fairly by PAMB
Members of PAMB treat people with respect
PAMB treats people with dignity, even in disagreement
Scale: min/max value: 1.0–6.0, mean: 4.1, SD: 1.0
Factor loadings < .720 ~ > .907
Impartiality	0.787
PAMB considers the rights of farmers and residents PAMB is overly influenced by special interest groups PAMB decisions are biased toward the rich
Philippine environmental laws generally favors some groups
Scale: min/max value: 1.0–6.0, Mean: 3.6, SD: 1.0
Factor loadings < .67 ~ > .85
Voice	0.872
PAMB listens to opinions of the people it regulates
Citizens can influence decisions of PAMB
Philippine environmental laws consider opinions of the people
Philippine environmental consider the rights of individuals
Scale: min/max value: 1.0–6.0; mean: 4.1, SD: .98
Factor loadings < .720 ~ > .83
Trustworthiness	0.874
Decision makers care about residents
PAMB created out of care for Philippine forests
PAMB is trustworthy
Scale: min/max value: 1.0–6.0, mean: 1.2, SD: 1.1
Factor loadings < .867 ~ > .901
Dependent variable
Cooperation
Always obey laws/regulations of PAMB
I generally obey environmental regulations
It is sometimes necessary to break laws of PAMB (reversed)

PAMB: protected area management board; SD: standard deviation.

N = 76.

Correlations between the constructs were first assessed (Table 3). As shown, all four elements are highly related to each other but particularly, trustworthiness is highly related to the three procedural elements of respect, impartiality and voice (.83, .82, and .81, respectively). This is consistent with patterns shown in previous research (Mazerolle et al., 2012; Nix et al., 2015) and is theoretically reasonable since the procedural justice framework assumes that the elements of respect, impartiality and voice influence opinions about the trustworthiness or legitimacy of enforcement agents. Empirically, however, this poses potential multicollinearity problems in regression models. Trustworthiness was then regressed against respect, impartiality and voice with multicollinearity diagnostics. The results showed an unacceptable model with multicollinearity problems. The tolerance level for this model was .257 for respect (less than the threshold value of > .3) with a Variance Inflation Factor of 3.9 (greater than the accepted threshold value of < 2.5). It appears that respect was particularly related to trustworthiness in the multivariate model. A new model was specified with only impartiality and voice as independent variables. This model showed acceptable tolerance and VIF levels. Thus, the succeeding path analysis predicting cooperation excluded respect among the predictors of trustworthiness.

Table 3.

Correlations between trustworthiness and procedural justice domains.

	Respect	Impartiality	Voice	Trustworthiness
Respect	1	.785**	.790**	.832**
Impartiality		1	.581**	.817**
Voice			1	.806**
Trustworthiness				1

Correlation is significant at p < .001 (two-tailed).

N = 76.

Figure 1 shows the path model. Consistent with procedural justice theory (but taking into consideration the multicollinearity problem of respect that was discussed earlier), impartiality and voice are both hypothesized to directly affect citizens’ opinions of PAMB trustworthiness as well as their cooperation with PAMB. Opinions of PAMB trustworthiness is in turn hypothesized to directly affect cooperation (per procedural justice theory). The calculated path coefficients show that both impartiality and voice significantly affects trustworthiness with standard coefficients of .51 and .48, respectively (solid line). This supports procedural justice theory. However, trustworthiness does not independently affect cooperation (Figure 2, B = .06 and indicated by a broken line). Figure 2 also shows that voice is unrelated to cooperation (B = -.16). On the other hand, impartiality, net of trustworthiness and voice is independently related to cooperation (B = .48). It is the only procedural justice element that is significantly related to cooperation.

Figure 1.

Hypothetical model on procedural justice and cooperation.

Figure 2.

Path model of procedural justice and cooperation.

It appears that for this Philippine sample, the procedural justice model for the most part, behaved according to hypothesized directions. Impartiality and voice were all significantly related to opinions of agency trustworthiness, consistent with theory. Respect was very highly related to trustworthiness and produced multicollinearity challenges indicating that the two constructs overlap substantially. Perhaps this calls for a more nuanced assessment of the constructs of respect and trustworthiness in this setting.

Inconsistent with PJ theory, trustworthiness was unrelated to cooperation. Instead, impartiality was independently and directly related both to cooperation and to trustworthiness. In earlier research Gau (2011) separately examined the psychometrics of trustworthiness and compliance since these two constructs are generally confounded in empirical measures of legitimacy. In other words, measures of legitimacy often include elements of trust as well as elements of compliance/cooperation and are used as unidimensional measures. In her study, Gau (2011) found these two measures to be psychometrically independent. Results of the preceding analyses appear to substantiate Gau’s assessments. It appears that cooperation with an enforcement body and opinions about its trustworthiness may be independent of each other and may proceed from somewhat overlapping but potentially different causal mechanisms.

While procedural justice may indeed have utility in gaining cooperation and compliance in the environmental regulatory milieu, elements comprising procedural justice may need to be more carefully examined to get a better measure of the mechanisms that drive opinions about the enforcement agents and ultimately cooperation with these environmental enforcement agents.

Discussion

Criminologists have delved into the challenges (particularly harms) brought about by human and nature intersections and have situated environmental challenges at the macro-level across important theoretical dimensions. Yet more empirical work is needed to test relevant theories within green criminology as well as those within mainstream criminology that are relevant to the nexus of humans and the natural environment is needed to advance the impact of criminology in environmental science. This research extends the theory of procedural justice, a social-psychological theory but extensively used in criminology to assess citizen perceptions and trust of the police, into the environmental regulatory milieu. As stated earlier, this research uses individual-level data to assess citizens’ perceptions of mandated eco-use change and its enforcement. This is different from industry-level compliance studies or even state/nation level policies that had been the focus of much environmental research in criminology.

Procedural justice is a potentially useful framework since environmental laws and enforcement are often top-down formulas, akin to policing in general social settings. Compliance and cooperation by citizens are key and possibly even more so in the environmental milieu where the sustainability of enforced eco-use change rests in large part on the cooperation of citizens. Indeed, there is increasing recognition in environmental regulatory endeavors for a devolved system that takes into consideration the multifaceted and multilevel roles of citizens, corporate or private agencies, or non-governmental and governmental units in conservation, compliance and sustainability (Hashiguchi et al., 2016; Verburg et al., 2006; Wagner et al., 2015). Land use (or eco-use) change takes more than protection zones and environmental laws but includes the knowledge and understanding of the underlying human and cultural drivers that impact conservation efforts. The social-psychological elements in procedural justice that attempts to tease out the intersections between laws, behavior and compliance are potentially very useful in this endeavor.

The main goal of this paper was to test if procedural justice elements are useful constructs when used within the context of environmental regulations and enforcement. The results demonstrated that procedural justice constructs are indeed useful in organizing the complex social exchanges within environmental regulations and enforcement. The framework shows promising potential to better understand how citizens view environmental regulations and its enforcement agents. While the main constructs of procedural justice were reliable, a more developed measure of respect that is distinct from trustworthiness is needed. The utility of the constructs opens avenues to better understand cooperation, a key to any sustainable eco-use transformation. Specific to the Philippines, the results inform regulatory agents of the necessity to cultivate trust relationships with the regulated citizens, and particularly impartiality in enforcing environmental laws where enforcement has been historically tinged with corruption and skewed in favor of the rich (Batalla, 2015); Primavera, 2000 #1208}.

Limitations and avenues for future research

While the study provides insight into the utility of the procedural justice model in this unique context of environmental regulation within a developing country, there are important limitations that should be mentioned. First is the small, unrepresentative sample of stakeholders around the Banahaw protected area. Although attempts were made to sample from five municipalities surrounding the protected zone, other towns were not represented.⁴ Relatedly, the small sample also did not allow for a more rigorous assessment of procedural justice constructs, particularly the use of confirmatory factor analyses and structural modeling in assessing relationships. Future studies will require more resources to cover a larger land area and more interviewers to conduct face-to-face interviewing across this area.

Second, elements besides procedural justice should be included in the models such as citizens’ subjective knowledge of the enforcement body (PAMB) or even their general level of trust (global trust or often called dispositional trust) as well as potentially demographic variables like sex or educational levels. This will provide a more complete model and allows assessments of the importance of these factors in citizens’ perceived trustworthiness of the enforcement agents or their cooperation with these agents.

Third, a comparison of procedural justice assessments across protected landscapes (within the same country) will allow for a more global understanding of the importance of this element in conservation. Thus, samples from different protected landscapes will greatly improve the external validity of procedural justice elements in conservation.

Notwithstanding these sampling and measurement limitations, the paper provides a potentially new avenue for criminological research, particularly by those who are interested in environmental regulations across the globe and the implications of these regulations. The theories and frameworks that criminologists have used to understand sanctioning and responses to regulatory mechanisms are potentially very useful toward a better understanding of compliance behaviors in environmental regulatory settings.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Glenn Forbes of Tanggol Kalisakasan/Wildlife and Biodiversity Enforcement Specialist of USAID/Protectwildlife, Philippines.

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: The authors received financial support for the research from the Delia Koo Endowment funds, Asian Studies Center at Michigan State University.

ORCID iD

Sheila R Maxwell

Notes

Author biography

Sheila R Maxwell is an associate professor in the School of Criminal Justice at Michigan State University. Her research includes behavioral responses to sanctioning and regulatory mechanisms particularly across cultural milieus; and, cross-cultural patterns of violence, delinquency, and victimization.

Christopher D Maxwell is a professor at the School of Criminal Justice at Michigan State University. His research interests include criminal justice processing, testing the benefits and costs of sanctions and therapeutic treatments for spouse abusers, and the causes, correlates, and consequences of violence against intimate partners and elderly family members.

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