Suchergebnisse

Political jurisdictions have incentives to promote pollution spillovers to capture the benefits of economic production within their borders while exporting the environmental costs to their neighbors. The authors examine the extent to which U.S. states engage in this type of free-riding behavior. Studying enforcement of the federal Clean Air Act from 1990 through 2000, the authors employ zero-inflated negative binomial regression to predict the number of state-initiated enforcement actions conducted in counties bordering other jurisdictions. They find that states perform fewer enforcement actions in counties adjacent to international borders but no evidence that states conduct less enforcement in counties that border other states. Adapted from the source document.

Political jurisdictions have incentives to promote pollution spillovers to capture the benefits of economic production within their borders while exporting the environmental costs to their neighbors. The authors examine the extent to which U.S. states engage in this type of free-riding behavior. Studying enforcement of the federal Clean Air Act from 1990 through 2000, the authors employ zero-inflated negative binomial regression to predict the number of state-initiated enforcement actions conducted in counties bordering other jurisdictions. They find that states perform fewer enforcement actions in counties adjacent to international borders but no evidence that states conduct less enforcement in counties that border other states.

Political observers often refer to Missouri as a "bellwether" state, suggesting that the political and social attitudes of Missourians tend to reflect those of the rest of the United States. (Robertson, 2004). To better understand the opinions of Missourians on a set of important political, economic, and social issues, researchers at the Harry S Truman School of Public Affairs examined results from the 2008 Cooperative Congressional Election Survey (CCES). This nationally-representative public opinion survey included a sample of 817 Missouri residents. In this report, we explore the attitudes of Missourians to examine how they differ from the rest of the nation and how they vary within the state. Given the demographic patterns of Missouri, we are particularly interested in potential differences in attitudes between residents living in urban and rural areas (see Appendix A for additional discussion.) Overall, we find that Missouri residents shared similar attitudes on major economic, social and military issues with the rest of the nation, but we also find that rural and urban Missourians held distinctly different opinions on these same issues. These differences in opinion are likely driven by factors such as partisan identification, political ideology, education, and other socioeconomic attributes. ; Includes bibliographical references

There are a number of state level institutions designed to limit the impact of special interests on government or to facilitate citizen participation in government. These include legislative term limits, ballot initiatives, governors' line item veto power and public funding for legislative and gubernatorial candidates. While most of these state government institutions are fairly common around the United States, relatively little is known about Americans' opinion of them. This policy note explores Americans' views on these features as well as the relationship between survey respondents' partisanship and their approval of these state government institutions. To assess the public's attitudes on these political institutions, researchers at the Harry S Truman School of Public Affairs at the University of Missouri conducted a national survey of 1,000 adults. The survey was administered as part of the 2007 Cooperative Congressional Election Study (CCES), a 10,000 person survey conducted through the collaborative efforts of a consortium of universities. The 2007 CCES was administered in November 2007 by Polimetrix, an Internet survey firm located in Palo Alto, California. ; Includes bibliographical references

Communities are increasingly turning to local environmental institutions (LEIs) to address unmet environmental challenges. Yet there has been very little empirical analysis of LEIs, and we know surprisingly little about their origins. In this article, the authors use a rational choice framework to examine the incentives and disincentives communities face in deciding whether to establish LEIs. In particular, the authors study the decision of communities to adopt local wetlands bylaws under the Massachusetts Wetlands Protection Act. Using event history analysis, the authors find strong evidence that environmental need, economic attributes, and economic constraints have strong effects on the impulse of communities to adopt LEIs.

Community‐based efforts to address environmental problems occupy an increasingly large space on the environmental policy landscape. Advocates argue that local environmental institutions (LEIs) can deliver both procedural and environmental quality benefits. Yet, despite over a decade of expansive support, the performance of LEIs remains largely unknown, particularly with regard to environmental outcomes. In this article, we consider new environmental outcome data we compiled from local efforts to implement the Massachusetts Wetlands Protection Act. We find that stronger forms of LEIs generate both quantitatively and qualitatively better environmental outcomes, which suggests that LEIs may live up to their advocates' expectations.

Attention to the need for greater stakeholder involvement in environmental decisionmaking has been increasing in recent years. The authors draw on a number of cases of environmental planning in the Great Lakes Region in an attempt to understand the possible benefits stakeholder processes can bring to environmental decisionmaking. They outline benefits in four areas: (1) the quality of decisions, (2) the relationships among important players in the decisionmaking process, (3) the capacity for managing environmental problems, and (4) improvements in environmental quality. Although the research suggests that in a number of the cases studied there was a good outcome in the first three areas, there did not appear to be an obvious link between good participation and improvements in environmental quality through implementation of cleanup and restoration activities.

The need for greater public involvement in environmental decision-making has been highlighted in recent high-profile research reports & emphasized by leaders at all levels of government. In some cases, environmental agencies have opened the door to greater participation in their programs. However, there is relatively little information on what can be gained from greater public involvement & what makes some programs work while others fail. This article presents an evaluation of public participation in several cases of environmental planning in the Great Lakes region, focusing on how effectively these efforts introduced public values into government decision-making, resolved conflict among stakeholders, & built trust in environmental agencies. Data for the analysis came from a case survey method in which the authors systematically coded information from previously written case studies. The research findings support an optimistic view of public participation -- although not without important caveats -- & emphasize the importance of communication & commitment in the participatory process. 2 Tables, 1 Figure, 48 References. [Copyright 2000 John Wiley and Sons, Ltd.]

Abstract
President Biden has committed to a "whole of government approach" to address environmental and climate justice, which includes directing resources to historically underserved and overburdened populations. The Justice40 program is one of the signature programs in these efforts, requiring that 40 percent of the benefits of designated programs be targeted to disadvantaged communities. Because many federal spending programs that are part of the Justice40 initiative involve the transfer of funds from federal agencies to state governments, the Biden Administration will need the assistance of state officials if the initiative is to achieve its stated objectives. In this article, we study early state implementation of Justice40 in the area of transportation, focusing on the federal highway program and the new National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (NEVI) program. Our analysis of interviews with state officials and state NEVI plans reveals only modest differences between states in Justice40 implementation based on the partisanship of gubernatorial leadership, despite outspoken resistance to the initiative from many Republican governors. We also find that states that have made previous policy and institutional commitments to allocate resources in a manner similar to Justice40 are generally more receptive to this federal initiative.

AbstractThe public opinion literature examining the role of proximity and not-in-my-backyard (NIMBY) attitudes in people's judgments about energy projects has come to inconclusive findings. We argue that these mixed results are due to vast differences and significant limitations in research designs, which we mitigate through a large study (n = 16,200) of Americans' attitudes toward energy projects. Our approach examines a diverse set of energy projects in development, explicitly compares the attitudes of individuals living in the vicinity of projects with those farther away, and includes the careful measurement of the NIMBY concept. The analyses show little evidence that proximity in general or NIMBY objections in particular are important determinants of project support. Instead, other factors are more important, including perceptions of local environmental quality, risk orientation, concern about climate change, and trust in energy companies.