Variety of Private Sustainability Standards

This research looks at the different ‘sponsors' behind private sustainability standards. Private sustainability standards or voluntary standards come in many different shapes and forms. Standards are usually categorized as private sector standard, civil society standard or a combination of the two and whether they are single actor or multiple actor sponsored (Kolk, Van Tulder, and Welters 1999; Abbott and Snidal 2009; Jenkins and Unies 2001; Fiorini et al. 2017). This paper argues that these categories are too broad, and that fundamental differences are expected between standards sponsored by producers versus retailers, producers in developing countries versus developed countries and producers in generic product versus branded product sectors. These differences are theoretically discussed and illustrated by standards in the cut-flower sector in Kenya. Doing this, this paper raises hypotheses on three different levels which should be tested on multiple sectors in the future. The hypotheses on the first level relate to differences in terms of design of the standard, the second level are differences in certification decision of producers and thirdly similarities between the standards based on market incentives.