Abstract:The Eco-Management and Audit Scheme (EMAS) is the official Environmental Management System (EMS) issued by the European Union (EU). Italy is the country where EMAS is most widespread, accounting for over 1000 registered organizations. Since the entry into the force of the Regulation in 1997, the number of registrations has constantly grown until 2008, when the figures started to drop. The phenomena are due to both the decrease of the annual registration rate and the lack of renewals. According to the Italian Institute for Environmental Protection and Research (ISPRA), in recent years, an increasing number of organizations decided to withdraw from EMAS registration. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the reasons of this negative trend. The first step consisted of a literature review concerning the main barriers, difficulties and costs incurred by EMAS-registered organizations. Subsequently, this information was integrated with data about the evolution of EMAS registrations and the results of a previous survey, which involved the entire population of Italian registered firms. The present exploratory research highlighted economic and operational domains concerning the cancellation trends that deserve a deeper investigation, which will be conducted through a questionnaire addressed to Italian firms that did not renew the registration in the last lustrum. The intended output will allow us to identify stakeholders' priority intervention areas in order to suggest an operative strategy to reduce EMAS cancellation rates, addressed to Member States (MS) Competent Bodies.

The last revision of the EMAS (Eco Management and Audit Scheme) Regulation encouraged a cluster approach to increase the participation of the organizations and to involve local stakeholders in the commitment to sustainability. Our research activity intends to partially fill the literature gap in the field by investigating the Italian cluster approach to EMAS, characterized by the creation of a cluster Managing Committee (MC)—which can receive an EMAS Cluster Certificate—in order to improve the implementation of the scheme. We investigated the effectiveness of MCs actions on different stakeholder categories in the nine Italian clusters with EMAS Cluster Certificate. We present the results of a survey conducted through different stakeholder categories in the considered clusters. The main goals of the investigation are to determine the effectiveness of EMAS Certificate for: local stakeholder involvement, network creation, environmental performance improvement and the increase in EMAS single registration. We find that EMAS Cluster Certificate is perceived as effective in improving environmental performance of the area and enhancing cluster image. Despite the recognition of these positive aspects, few organizations showed interest in EMAS registration because of the costs involved and the lack of incentives available from public institutions

Abstract:The last revision of the EMAS Regulation encouraged a cluster approach to increase the participation of the organizations and to involve local stakeholders in the sustainability process. Our research activity, conducted by the Department of Business Studies of Roma Tre University and ISPRA (High Institute for Environmental Protection and Research), intends to partially fill the literature gap in the field by investigating the Italian cluster approach for EMAS, characterized by the creation of a cluster Managing Committee (MC) -which can receive an EMAS Cluster Certificate -in order to improve the implementation of the scheme. If in a first phase we investigated the effectiveness of MCs support given to registered EMAS organizations, the main objective of the second step has been to verify the impact of MCs actions on different stakeholders categories in 12 Italian clusters. We present the results of a survey conducted through the distribution of a specifically designed questionnaire on different categories of stakeholders in the considered clusters. The main two goals of the investigation are: to determine the impacts of MCs action in terms of environmental performance enhancements and network creations to improve the cluster competitiveness; to evaluate how the tools offered to cluster organizations have effectively contributed to a widespread knowledge of EMAS and environmental concerns.