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In 1995 we commenced a two year review of the literature on regulatory compliance.
At the time, remarkable advances were being made in other areas of health and social policy (eg smoking, littering, safe driving)and it was thought lessons were potentially available for urban animal management (UAM). The review resulted in a series of papers by Virginia Jackson to the National Conference on UAM in 1995 and 1996 entitled:
1. 'Regulatory compliance: exploring its limitations'; and
2. 'Rethinking approaches to urban animal management: a review and integration of the strategies available'
The fundamental conclusion of the two papers is that regulatory approaches will not on their own, solve all of the problems we deal with in UAM. They need to be supplemented by a carefully planned mix of non regulatory approaches that emphasise voluntary and passive compliance with the standards we set for responsible behaviour by pet owners.
Readers are referred to these papers for a fully referenced review of the issues (Jackson 1995, Jackson 1996). The following discussion is an integration of the two papers.
Urban Animal Management in Australia
In Australia, UAM is the name given to a range of issues associated with the management of domestic pets living in the urban environment. In the early days, it was relatively straightforward - registration, strays and a few aggressive dogs. Defecation by dogs was largely a maintenance issue, excessive barking was something that neighbours sorted out between themselves andcats and wildlife weren't on the agenda at all. How things have changed. Each state now has an established legal frameworkcovering, in some cases, both dogs and cats and the ambit of control has grown into what seems like an ever-expanding array of contexts. These new concerns are not all as straightforward as their earliest cousins. Many are inherently subjective. Others wedon't yet know a lot about. And just about all of them are complex and multi-faceted, requiring knowledge of animal behaviour,the various triggers to compliance by humans and the management of tolerance.
It is not surprising that local authorities around Australia have traditionally focussed on enforcement approaches to managing domestic pets (ie enforcement of laws, orders etc). UAM originated in Council by-laws departments at a time when enforcement of rules was the routine response to handling a range of different complaints. However it is now recognised that more sophisticated approaches are required to supplement the enforcement task.
The first paper in this series explored the limitations of enforcement in securing desired standards of behaviour in a whole range of policy contexts. The intention was not to undermine the need for regulation in UAM but to ensure we consider the most appropriate mix of tools for the particular problems at hand. It is worthwhile at this point revisiting the limitations of regulation before we go on to consider other approaches.
Ineffectual or Counterproductive Regulations
Solving Complex Problems
A regulatory approach is suited to problems that are well understood, guided by clear objective standards and which lend themselves to empirical testing. Many problems are not so straightforward. Because of their relative rigidity and permanence, heavy reliance on regulations to solve complex problems needs to be questioned.
1. Problems that are not well understood
The more we know about most social problems, including those in UAM, the more complex they seem to become. Many problems have more than one cause, which interact with one another and vary in different contexts. Detailed analysis is often precluded by political pressures for a 'quick fix'. A regulatory approach is always tempting because it smacks of conclusive action - theproblem will be 'solved' if we enforce a new regulation. That might be appropriate if the problem has a known solution but many problems don't. It is sometimes wiser to make small advances with policy instruments that embody sufficient flexibility for a change in direction as our knowledge about the problem increases and as the causal forces themselves change. Flexibility is not an inherent feature of the regulatory approach.
2. Opinions vary about what to do about complex problems
Because of their complexity, the community rarely agrees on what to do about complex problems or fully appreciates the tradeoffs involved. And, to make matters more complex, the balance of opinion tends to shift over time as arguments move in and out of favour and new issues arise. What often happens is that a proposed regulation becomes so watered down to accommodatethe diversity of viewpoints that it ceases to have any practical effect. It might be more effective, in these circumstances, to concentrate on less contentious non regulatory options such as public education.
3. Measuring performance
A regulatory approach needs to rely on a range of proxies that may or may not be sound indicators of the overall standard sought. In a restaurant for example, it might be number of sinks, size of kitchen and type of ventilation. The danger is that the controls become so detailed to cover all variance that they sound senseless and may miss their objective altogether. At best, operators resent the intrusion and doubts to their professionalism. A more worrying outcome is to turn a disposition to co-operate into a disposition to resist. It is therefore not surprising that many health authorities are turning to education and moral suasion in the hope of achieving voluntary rather than coercive compliance.
4. Unintended consequences
Regulations often have unintended consequences. By their very nature, unintended consequences are hard to predict. However that doesn't absolve us from carefully examining the seriousness of possible consequences of all new regulations. It is extremely hard to abandon regulations even when adverse side effects begin to outweigh gains. Not only do they have statutory backing,but they often develop a momentum of their own which, once established, is extremely difficult to subvert.
Unenforcable and symbolic regulation
Making rules tends to be easier than implementing them and rule makers often under-estimate the many practical difficulties involved. It is sobering to realise that many regulations are, by and large, unenforcable either because they are so vague as to be meaningless or because they set standards that are unattainable. A cynic might say that rules are often just lip service to appease powerful interests - politicians can be seen to be 'doing something about the problem' without posing any real threat to the activities of those affected by the controls.
Unenforcable and symbolic regulations may offer a short term solution but they can cause more harm than good by creating conflicting community expectations that deepen existing social divisions.
Unreasonable regulations
Individuals are more likely to comply with laws they think are reasonable. Unjust or unreasonable regulations have been shown to breed resentment and resistance, even with the threat of enforcement.
Education is now the routine answer to regulatory failure. However no amount of education will achieve universal compliance with laws that are basically unreasonable or unjust.
Overregulation produces underregulation
Extremely stringent standards are a powerful incentive for inaction by regulatory authorities.
First, inaction may reflect enforcement officers' quite plausible belief that the regulation requires them to control an activity to an absurd point. Second, inaction may be mindful of the political backlash that could result from enforcing very stringent standards.
Finally, inaction may be cognisant of the need for a great deal of information to support a review of enforcement action (whether judicial or in-house).
The net result may actually be less control over an activity than would result from a more flexible approach to the problem.
Stringent controls also impose heavily on an agencies resources leaving other activities free from regulatory control or attention. By defending overly stringent regulations that provide limited extra benefits at high marginal costs, busy authorities spends both precious resources and political capital. Doing so limits their capability to address other, more significant problems.
Displacement
A new regulation may displace rather than eliminate a problem because it has not attacked the problem's root cause. Displacement may be spatial (the problem shifts to another area), temporal (it shifts to another time of the day) or substantive (it shifts to another related area of concern that is affected by the regulation). Sometimes the displaced problem will have greater impact than that which it replaces.
The Role of Regulation in UAM
We will always need some enforcement, particularly to bring the 'bad apples' into line. Rules also have a role to play in broad scale attitudinal change. However the beneficial effects of regulation should not blind us to its shortcomings. As a policy tool, it is inherently inefficient because of its focus on means (eg leashed dogs, cat curfews) rather than ends (responsible behaviour) and because it consumes vast resources in maintaining an enforcement presence for benefits that are not always assured (you can't control what happens 5 minutes after you leave). This doesn't mean that UAM laws should be abandoned. Instead we should recognise the inherent failings of regulation and understand how these failings operate in the particular policy context in whichwe are working - spending all our resources on enforcement will not likely to achieve universal compliance or responsible behaviour by everyone all the time.
By contrast, voluntary compliance, if it can be achieved, will just about always provide more meaningful, lasting changes in behaviour. It depends more on overcoming ignorance, indifference and incompetence than on prescribing concrete forms of acceptable behaviour. Education is the latest all-embracing buzzword. However it is not easy - there are a many approaches to choose from and it is requires careful planning and skill. What is needed in UAM is a framework to help us plan the best mix of approaches on the basis of a more complete understanding of the full range of tools available.
The second paper in this series was a first step towards the development of such a framework. It presents the tools available highlighting lessons learned in comparable areas of urban policy.
Compliance Defined
Most pet owners are typically responsible. The part of the management task in UAM is with the few who don't behave responsibly.
The reasons why people do and don't comply with UAM standards are obviously of central interest. What follows below is a tentative model of compliance in UAM, adapted from the generalised model first suggested by Troy in 1989. Thus non-compliance in UAM may be :
Inadvertent due to:
1. Ignorance (1) - people aren't aware that the rules exist or apply to them.
2. Ignorance (2) - people are aware of the rules but don't know that they don't comply (eg excessive barking happens while they are at work)
3. Ignorance (3) - people are aware of the rules but don't know how to comply (eg they don't know how to stop their dog barking excessively).
4. Indifference, forgetfulness or oversight.
Deliberate due to:
5. A game approach to rules - implies no serious rejection of the rules but sees it as acceptable for people to try to get by without complying and seeing it as a 'fair cop' when caught.
6. Rejection of the rules - non-compliance within 'safe' limits, private protest, non-specific, unorganised and may simply be a challenge to authority.
7. Political/moral protest on specific issues - may be an individual setting an example or more organised protest by groups.
8. General civil disobedience or refusal to cooperate (often across all kinds of rules and regulations).
Quite clearly, different strategies are appropriate for different dimensions of non-compliance.
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