Optimising statutory general environmental duties of care: Exploring the behavioural drivers for prevention in general duty implementation

This thesis examines how regulators, implementing a new statutory general duty of care, can maximise the compliance of small or medium sized enterprises (SMEs), using Victoria’s general environmental duty as a case study. The thesis systematically reviews the existing literature to identify nine challenges in implementing statutory general duties, explores the challenges described by frontline compliance staff, and examines compliance behaviours of SMEs. While SMEs need tailored and bespoke tool combinations, frontline staff tend to operate in circumstances that drive the reflexive use of generic tool combinations. The thesis proposes six principles to overcome this disconnect.