Affective Policy Performance Evaluation Model: A Case of an International Trade Policy Implementation

Firms often superficially adopt policies because of governmental rules and regulations, so as to avoid penalties or to gain benefits. However, the evaluation and characterization of those kinds of adoptions as policy performance distorts the true level of policy performance: social sustainability. This study proposes an affective policy performance evaluation model. The attitudes of employees toward adopting a policy are characterized into genuine and superficial compliance. Their behaviors are explained through voluntary and opportunistic adoptions. In order to validate the proposed model, a survey was conducted on an international trade policy target group ( n = 216) for the Strategic Trade Control System (STCS), in order to understand their attitudes toward adopting the policy. The survey data was analyzed by a structural equation modeling method. The measures of the factors in the proposed model are adopted and modified from existing studies. The most effective resources of policy implementation on the firms’ genuine and superficial compliance and ultimately on the firms’ voluntary policy adoption are revealed through the analysis. Based on the results, this study presents a strategy for allocating and managing policy implementation resources to exclusively encourage firms’ trade policy adoptions.