Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Despite our understanding of the causes of environmental injustice, little research has examined how vulnerable communities might reduce their exposure to environmental hazards. In this paper, we suggest that institutional designs are one mechanism that can alleviate environmental injustices. We argue that certain institutional choices alter coordination and collective active problems faced by residents of poor communities by creating community focal points. These focal points lower citizens’ costs of gathering information and encourage political mobilization among deprived groups, thereby altering regulated firms’ incentives to pursue minimal environmental compliance in those communities. To test our expectations, we examine the relative impact of state air pollution control agency institutional designs on regulatory policy outputs across more and less vulnerable communities for all zip codes in the United States. We combine regulatory output and community demographic data with data on a specific institutional design feature of state regulatory agencies -- the functional location of regulatory field office authority within minority and low-income neighborhoods. The results support our expectations; low-income and minority zip codes with offices located within them induce lower inspection and violation rates among regulated firms compared to similar communities without such offices. These results suggest that patterns of environmental injustice can be mitigated by the creative use of institutional design choices regarding the location of regulatory field offices.