Beyond the Neighborhood: A Multilevel Explanation of the Environmental Performance of Polluting Facilities

• In Event: 211 - Section on Environment and Technology Paper Session. Environmental Inequality

Abstract

This study examines how the operations of state governments, in conjunction with neighborhood characteristics, impact the environmental performance of 1,748 polluting industrial facilities in the United States between 2002 and 2012. Quantitative environmental studies have focused on the demographic and socioeconomic composition of neighborhoods to explain the uneven distribution of environmental hazards across neighborhoods. However, we cannot fully understand such neighborhood-level variation without taking into account social processes and structures beyond the neighborhood. This study thus sheds light on state governments as large-scale determinants of local environmental outcomes. Multilevel statistical analyses demonstrate that, alongside the socioeconomic characteristics of neighborhoods, state governments significantly influenced facilities' environmental practices. In particular, the environmental performance of facilities was improved in states where governments were inclined to favor pro-environmental policies. However, pro-environmental policies did not contribute to improving the environmental practices of facilities in poor neighborhoods; rather, poor neighborhoods in pro-environmental states experienced an increase in environmental hazards from 2002 and 2012. This implies that, if environmental policies do not consider environmental inequality issues, pro-environmental policies may impose greater environmental burdens on disadvantaged social groups. Finally, in the Southern United States, greater incorporation of African Americans into local political institutions benefited the African American population by improving the environmental performance of plants in Black neighborhoods. The implications of this study include the need for multilevel explanations of environmental inequalities, which can identify mechanisms for shaping environmental inequalities beyond the neighborhood and generate policy implications that can be deployed on multiple geographic scales.

Author

• Juyoung Lee, Brown University