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The green debate : information optimists, pessimists, and realists -- Valuing green : the content of the information -- Trusting green : the organizations behind the information -- Measuring green : the generation of the information -- Delivering green : the communication of the information -- Being green : the effects of the information -- Green realism : limits, linkages, and outcomes

Private firms are increasingly being regarded as moral agents of their stakeholders and the broader public. Stakeholders can use different types of evaluation organizations to monitor this division of moral labor, but must also monitor the credibility of this second layer of moral agents. This paper uses agency, signaling, and legitimacy theory to develop a novel conceptual framework showing how both firms and evaluation organizations send signals of their credibility as moral agents to earn grants of legitimacy from their moral stakeholders. The paper also describes how three specific characteristics of ratings and certifications – transparency, expertise, and independence – may signal different forms of credibility, appeal to particular stakeholder groups, and elicit different forms of legitimacy. A content analysis of the websites of 245 eco-labels, sustainability ratings and other forms of environmental evaluations reveals the multi-dimensional nature of these three characteristics, and finds that transparency is the most commonly-sent signal of credibility, followed by independence and then expertise. These results highlight the complexity of existing signals of credibility, and suggest several strategies – including voluntary credibility standards and a virtual information marketplace – that both private and public actors can pursue to improve the quality and accessibility of these signals of credibility.

Power is a ubiquitous term in political science, and yet the discipline lacks a metric of power that can be applied to both formal and informal political contexts. Building on past work on power and power resources, this paper develops a method to estimate the power of different actors over an organization. It uses this method to analyze the power of the public, private, and civil sectors within an original dataset of 245 cases of product and corporate environmental evaluations, such as ENERGY STAR, LEED Certification, and Newsweek's Greenest Company Rankings. These initiatives have received limited attention from the political science literature, but they have become an increasingly prominent political phenomenon. The paper finds that the private and civil sectors likely have more power over these information-based governance initiatives than the public sector. It also reveals their lack of transparency and hybrid accountability relationships, which complicate their legitimacy and effectiveness.

Initiatives that use information to catalyze collective action have proliferated in recent years, and represent a significant shift away from more traditional governance strategies, such as regulation. This dissertation analyzes this phenomenon of "information-based governance" in the context of the environmental arena, where non-profit organizations, government agencies, and companies have developed a wide range of product eco-labels and corporate sustainability ratings to evaluate the environmental performance of products and companies. The dissertation presents several theoretical perspectives that highlight the underlying nature of this form of governance, and describes the characteristics of a sample of 245 of these initiatives that are relevant to the United States marketplace. It also presents data on the relative popularity of these cases and the degree to which certain characteristics are associated with such popularity. Information on the public's preferences for different types of eco-labels and green ratings is presented from a survey of over 500 respondents as well. The dissertation also discusses the perceived effects and effectiveness of these programs, based on 70 interviews with consumers and representatives from government agencies, non-profit organizations, corporations, and academic institutions.In this dissertation, eco-labels and sustainability ratings are described in the context of their "information supply chains," which determine the issues they cover, the organizations they are affiliated with, the data they use, and the mechanisms by which they deliver their information. Data collected suggest that climate change and energy are their most commonly covered issues, non-profit organizations are their most common implementers, government agencies and corporations are their most common data sources, and certifications and awards are the most common form of the information they provide. The top two attributes preferred by the survey respondents were independence and transparency, although a minority of the 245 cases surveyed displayed these characteristics. More generally, the credibility of the data used by these programs was more important to respondents than either the trustworthiness of the organizations or the importance of the issues covered. While popular cases showed higher levels of criteria and outcome transparency, they are actually less likely to use independent data. Programs that have been in existence for more than three years and are associated with non-profit organizations and government programs are also more likely to be popular, while programs that have media connections and cover pollution issues are less likely to be popular. While the interview participants did not agree on an overarching definition of the effectiveness of these programs, they discussed several important dimensions of such effectiveness. The most commonly cited was improved environmental outcomes, and others included changes in consumer behavior, corporate behavior, and public policy. It was clear from these discussions that these initiatives can operate through multiple effect pathways that are not limited to consumer responsiveness. Indeed, these programs contribute to well-functioning democracies not only through the creation of specific public and private goods, but by providing information that is critical for citizens and their representatives to make wise decisions about society's priorities. Thus the accuracy of this information is critically important, and given its overall lack of transparency and independence, efforts are necessary to improve its accountability. The dissertation concludes with a discussion of recent developments in the field of eco-labels that represent different approaches to monitoring and governing these initiatives themselves.

Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to analyze the comprehensiveness of competing higher education sustainability assessments. Higher education institutions (HEIs) have been increasingly communicating their sustainability commitments to the public. To assist the public in evaluating these claims, a broad range of actors have assessed the sustainability of HEIs.


Design/methodology/approach
The paper uses an evaluation framework (the GRI-HE) consisting of criteria developed by the Global Reporting Initiative and the Association of University Leaders for a Sustainable Future to analyze the comprehensiveness of nine publicly-available frameworks that have been used to assess HEI sustainability.


Findings
While finding that in general these assessments are not comprehensive and particularly lack coverage of the social and economic dimensions of sustainability, the paper identifies the Pacific Sustainability Index and Sustainability Tracking and Assessment Rating System (STARS) as the most comprehensive assessments in the sector.


Research limitations/implications
This study does not assess the quality of the match to the GRI-HE's criteria, only whether they match to a reasonable degree. The analysis highlights areas where each HEI sustainability assessment framework can add criteria and improve their comprehensiveness and validity. Future research should explore the causes and relative importance of the gaps in these frameworks.


Originality/value
The paper provides a valuable discussion and demonstration of the use of comprehensiveness as a proxy metric for the validity of sustainability assessments. This analysis is the first detailed, comprehensive and transparent analysis of HEI sustainability assessments based on a broad-based and widely accepted set of criteria.

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction: Misinformation among Mass Audiences as a Focus for Inquiry -- PART I Dimensions of Audience Awareness of Misinformation -- ONE Believing Things That Are Not True: A Cognitive Science Perspective on Misinformation -- TWO Awareness of Misinformation in Health-Related Advertising: A Narrative Review of the Literature -- THREE The Importance of Measuring Knowledge in the Age of Misinformation and Challenges in the Tobacco Domain -- FOUR Measuring Perceptions of Shares of Groups -- FIVE Dimensions of Visual Misinformation in the Emerging Media Landscape -- PART II Theoretical Effects and Consequences of Misinformation -- SIX The Effects of False Information in News Stories -- SEVEN Can Satire and Irony Constitute Misinformation? -- EIGHT Media and Political Misperceptions -- NINE Misinformation and Science: Emergence, Diffusion, and Persistence -- TEN Doing the Wrong Things for the Right Reasons: How Environmental Misinformation Affects Environmental Behavior -- PART III Solutions and Remedies for Misinformation -- ELEVEN Misinformation and Its Correction: Cognitive Mechanisms and Recommendations for Mass Communication -- TWELVE How to Counteract Consumer Product Misinformation -- THIRTEEN A History of Fact Checking in U.S. Politics and Election Contexts -- FOURTEEN Comparing Approaches to Journalistic Fact Checking -- FIFTEEN The Role of Middle-Level Gatekeepers in the Propagation and Longevity of Misinformation -- SIXTEEN Encouraging Information Search to Counteract Misinformation: Providing "Balanced" Information about Vaccines -- Conclusion: An Agenda for Misinformation Research -- Contributors -- Index