The following are general principles to consider when developing and implementing economic incentive programs. They are taken directly from guidelines developed at a conference held cooperatively by the World Resources Institute and the US Environmental Protection Agency, where over 100 various stakeholders from government, non-governmental organizations and the business community attended. The direct link to this report can be found at: greenfees.wri.org. For guidance on how to implement these steps and specific incentive-based programs, refer to the Complete List of Links.

• Properly identify and engage the community of interest
• Establish clear goals, indicators, and end points
• Target incentives and language to stakeholder needs
• Establish strong, consistent leadership and a clear statement of principles around which stakeholder efforts can coalesce
• Experiment with demonstration projects
• Acknowledge and plan for culture shock
• Create equal-opportunity incentive programs
• Design programs to appropriate scales
• Build flexibility, practicality, and adaptability into programs
• Learn from previous successes
• Establish credibility and comparability of information
• Where appropriate, help industry associations to understand incentive-based approaches
• Work with appropriate level decision-makers within companies and develop succession plans
• Establish clear guidelines on how far states can go with efforts to innovate
• Develop metrics to help industry and consumers assess costs and benefits of production or behavioral changes
• Recognize and address industry fears about incentive-based programs
• Recognize and address environmental advocacy organizations' fears about the use of the market in environmental management
• Establish externally imposed deadlines for change
• Consider using combinations of trading and tax incentives
• Consider moving beyond industry reporting toward self-auditing, with required disclosure