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Being one of the primary soft-voluntary environmental policy instruments, ISO 14001 has been studied from a number of diverse perspectives and disciplines. Nevertheless, it is only few assessments that have attempted to shed light on variations in the diffusion ISO 14001 certification among countries in terms of national factors and macroeconomic conditions that may stimulate relevant implementation patterns. We employ a 1999–2017 annual time-series that yields a panel dataset of 33 countries, out of which 27 are OECD countries, complemented by the BRIICS. Applying the appropriate static and dynamic econometric specifications, the EKC hypothesis is not rejected in all the cases in static and dynamic specifications. Our turning points are in all cases within the sample ranging from $20,812 to $52,023. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present article is part of a wider investigation of private environmental management systems, conducted as part of the doctoral research. The perspective of the private sector managers on the role of the voluntary management systems was left unpublished at the time, and for the purposes of publication of these research conclusions, the interviewed managers were kindly asked to review their initial statements. A few minor completions were made, the major conclusions of the study remained, and were synthesised for the purposes of a short and comprehensive first-hand inverstigation of the role of the voluntary environmental management systems as they are perceived and understood by the managers implementing them. The relevance of such an investigation into the rationales for private environmental policies is very high, given the recent prioritization of green investments from the EU recovery funds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]