Abstract Publicizing firms' socially undesirable actions may enhance firms' incentives to avoid such actions. In 2009, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) began issuing press releases about facilities that violated safety and health regulations. Using quasi-random variation arising from a cutoff rule OSHA followed, I find that publicizing a facility's violations led other facilities to substantially improve their compliance and experience fewer occupational injuries. OSHA would need to conduct 210 additional inspections to achieve the same improvement in compliance as achieved with a single press release. Evidence suggests that employers improve compliance to avoid costly responses from workers.
Citation Johnson, Matthew S. 2020. "Regulation by Shaming: Deterrence Effects of Publicizing Violations of Workplace Safety and Health Laws." American Economic Review , 110 (6): 1866-1904 . DOI: 10.1257/aer.20180501 Choose Format: BibTeX EndNote Refer/BibIX RIS Tab-Delimited
PNW22 on May 28th, 2020 at 18:40 UTC »
Is there a source for the OSHA press releases halting? The research paper linked just explained why the press releases were beneficial (unless I missed that part). Through a Google search I was not able to find a source for this or locate where these press releases used to occur.
aphilsphan on May 28th, 2020 at 18:19 UTC »
In Pharma you can get a thing called a “Warning Letter” from the FDA. It is the last step before Consent Decrees and Marshals come and seize your product.
Warning Letters have cost firms 9 figures to remediate. Firms close down because of them, or stop selling to the US market. Plants are closed. The “sponge worthy Seinfeld episode had its origins in such a closure.
But the biggest worry is that they are PUBLISHED. Your customers read them. The Newspapers print stories about them.
They are very effective.
MunkyPhuck on May 28th, 2020 at 17:54 UTC »
The whole OSHA recordkeeping system is flawed. It depends on companies to actually keep records of all incidents that meet the criteria and make the records available for OSHA and the DOL in the event of an audit. The fact that the numbers declined is not necessarily indicative of the "shame" factor actually reducing injuries. It is just as likely that the shame factor reduced the number of records being kept on file for audit through the "OSHA Log" process. Also, I'd be interested in the amount of "witch doctors" and case management firms being utilized to keep numbers as low as possible. But we don't really track those.
Souce: I'm a Certified Safety Professional. I've been at this a long time.