Sustainability Standards

This chapter discusses the nature, legitimacy, impact and critique of voluntary standards for sustainability. We first develop a definition of sustainability standards and distinguish three different types of standards. This discussion shows that, while standardisation in the field of sustainability has grown in recent years, existing initiatives differ in several important ways. Next, we discuss how the legitimacy of sustainability standards can be assessed. We differentiate between standards’ input and output legitimacy. We then focus on the impact that sustainability standards can potentially have on adopting firms, end consumers and the regulated issue area. The final section takes a detailed look at the critique that has been raised against selected standards (e.g., the coexistence of multiple standards with a similar purpose).