Practices of stakeholder engagement vary widely across voluntary sustainability standard setters. This study examines how the sponsorship structure of standard setters affects the diversity of stakeholders included in consultations and the influence of stakeholder input on standards. I compare six sustainability standard setters through an original dataset of 7945 stakeholder comments submitted during public comment periods between 2012 and 2019 to answer two research questions. First, are some standard setters better at balancing stakeholder representation than others? And second, does stakeholder influence vary across standard setters? I find that industry-sponsored standards tend to attract more industry input than multistakeholder initiatives, but both tend to over-represent legacy stakeholders. I also find that sponsorship is a poor predictor of which comments will be influential. Comments that seek to weaken or clarify the rules in voluntary sustainability standards are more likely to exert influence irrespective of the sponsorship of the standard setter.

中文翻译：

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自愿可持续发展标准中利益相关者参与实践的比较

自愿可持续发展标准制定者的利益相关者参与实践差异很大。本研究探讨了标准制定者的赞助结构如何影响参与磋商的利益相关者的多样性以及利益相关者的意见对标准的影响。我通过 2012 年至 2019 年公众评议期间提交的 7945 条利益相关者评论的原始数据集对六位可持续发展标准制定者进行了比较，以回答两个研究问题。首先，一些标准制定者是否比其他制定者更擅长平衡利益相关者的代表性？其次，利益相关者的影响力是否因标准制定者而异？我发现行业发起的标准往往比多利益相关者倡议吸引更多的行业投入，但两者都倾向于过度代表传统利益相关者。我还发现赞助商并不能很好地预测哪些评论会产生影响力。无论标准制定者是否赞助，寻求削弱或澄清自愿性可持续发展标准中的规则的评论更有可能产生影响。