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Exploring risk-scapes in Oklahoma: institutional trust, environmental justice, climate change, and infrastructure
Abstract
Purpose
Across the USA, local municipalities and providers struggle to reliably supply water and electricity when faced with severe weather events induced by climate change. Previous research suggests those at higher risk for experiencing the detrimental effects of climate change have higher climate-related concerns. Additionally, research demonstrates variation in trust in institutions and perceptions of environmental justice along racial lines, which can influence concern for access to resources. Informed by this research, the authors ask two questions: how do Oklahomans’ trust in institutions, environmental justice perceptions and global climate change risk perceptions differ based on race, and how do these factors influence concern for water and electrical infrastructure? The purpose of this study is to better understand Oklahomans’ trust in information from institutions, environmental justice perceptions, global climate change risk perceptions and concern for water and electrical infrastructure.
Design/methodology/approach
This study uses a series of nested regression models to analyze the survey responses of 2,687 Oklahoman adults. The data were pulled from Wave 3 of the Oklahoma Meso-scale Integrated Socio-geographic Network survey, which is part of the National Science Foundation EPSCoR S3OK project.
Findings
The findings demonstrate the complex interplay of riskscapes – or risk landscapes – that encompass institutional trust, perceptions of environmental justice, climate change and infrastructure in Oklahoma. The authors find evidence that education and income are better predictors of institutional trust and environmental justice than race among our respondents. Political ideology emerges as a significant predictor across all hypotheses.
Originality/value
This study contributes to the understanding of complex dynamics involving race, perceptions of environmental justice, trust in information from institutions, risk perceptions of climate change and concerns for water and electrical infrastructure in Oklahoma.
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Critical infrastructure systems derive their importance from the societal needs they help meet. Yet the relationship between infrastructure system functioning and societal functioning is not well-understood, nor are the impacts of infrastructure system disruptions on consumers. We develop two empirical measures of societal impacts—willingness to pay (WTP) to avoid service interruptions and a constructed scale of unhappiness, compare them to each other and others from the literature, and use them to examine household impacts of service interruptions. Focusing on household-level societal impacts of electric power and water service interruptions, we use survey-based data from Los Angeles County, USA, to fit a random effects within-between model of WTP and an ordinal logit with mixed effects to predict unhappiness, both as a function of infrastructure type, outage duration, and household attributes. Results suggest household impact increases nonlinearly with outage duration, and the impact of electric power disruptions is greater than water supply disruptions. Unhappiness is better able to distinguish the effects of shorter-duration outages than WTP is. Some people experience at least some duration of outage without negative impact. Increased household impact was also associated with using electricity for medical devices or water for work or business, perceived likelihood of an emergency, worry about an emergency, past negative experiences with emergencies, lower level of preparation, less connection to the neighborhood, higher income, being married, being younger, having pets, and having someone with a medical condition in the house. Financial, time/effort, health, and stress concerns all substantially influence the stated level of unhappiness.
In February of 2021, Winter Storm Uri affected parts of the United States, Mexico, and Canada. Texas was particularly hard hit, as the state's primary power provider, ERCOT (the Electric Reliability Council of Texas), proved to be unprepared for the event—despite similar storms in 1989 and 2011 that revealed weaknesses in the state's electric grid system. This article investigates psychosocial outcomes of individuals who experienced Winter Storm Uri. Drawing upon survey data collected in Texas in April and May of 2022, we illustrate ways in which loss of critical infrastructure and compounding results influence levels of stress among respondents. Using Hofoll's (1989, 1991) Conservation of Resources model of stress, we find that Uri‐related losses of objects and conditions resources contribute to elevated stress as measured by the Avoidance subscale of the Impact of Event Scale (Horowitz 1976; Horowitz, Wilner, and Alvarez 1979)— more than one year after the disaster. Our regression model consisting of indicators of objects resource loss, conditions resource loss, and demographic characteristics explains approximately 33 percent of the variance in the Avoidance subscale. Findings suggest that more attention should be paid to the social impacts of critical infrastructure failures and that such impacts should be addressed by improving critical infrastructure policy and regulations, as well as the physical structures.
In June 2021, western North America experienced a record-breaking heat wave outside the distribution of previously observed temperatures. While it is clear that the event was extreme, it is not obvious whether other areas in the world have also experienced events so far outside their natural variability. Using a novel assessment of heat extremes, we investigate how extreme this event was in the global context. Characterizing the relative intensity of an event as the number of standard deviations from the mean, the western North America heat wave is remarkable , coming in at over four standard deviations. Throughout the globe, where we have reliable data, only five other heat waves were found to be more extreme since 1960. We find that in both reanalyses and climate projections , the statistical distribution of extremes increases through time, in line with the distribution mean shift due to climate change. Regions that, by chance, have not had a recent extreme heat wave may be less prepared for potentially imminent events.
The concept of biophilic urban planning has inspired neighborhood greening projects in many older urban communities in the USA and beyond. The strengths (e.g., environmental management, biodiversity, heat island mitigation) and challenges (e.g., greenwashing, green gentrification) of such projects are well-documented. Additional research on the relationship between these projects and various social factors (e.g., public perceptions, feelings, and mental health and well-being) is necessary to better understand how people adapt to said projects while struggling to navigate other more pressing socioeconomic issues, especially in communities facing environmental injustice and health inequity. In this article, we focus on one aspect of biophilic urban planning—green stormwater infrastructure (GSI) (e.g., rain gardens, bio-swales, pervious pavements, and wildflower meadows)—in Waterfront South, a post-industrial neighborhood in Camden, NJ, USA, where residents have faced environmental injustices for decades. Our qualitative analysis of in-depth semi-structured interviews of sixteen residents offered a thorough insight into their perceptions and emotions regarding different types of urban GSI projects. Residents acknowledge the many benefits that GSI offers to combat the neighborhood’s social and environmental injustices, but they are cautious about the possibility of some projects prompting new issues and concerns within the community. Our findings reveal potential implications in GSI planning, research, and practice in this neighborhood and similar urban places elsewhere that have yet to undergo gentrification.
Racial minorities bear disproportionate share of pollution and environmental risk. A key solution to such disparities is to increase their participation in the environmental policymaking process. In this article, I test various theories of environmental attitudes and participation-with a special focus on risk perception and group consciousness-on Whites and Minorities and use them to explain the racial differences in environmental concern and participatory intentions. Using survey data, I find that risk perception is positively associated with environmental concern and participatory intentions for both Whites and Minorities. I also find that many theories of environmental attitudes apply to Whites and Minorities differently. While the traditional explanations of political orientation and social connectedness apply to Whites, their patterns are less clear for Minorities. Instead, group consciousness plays an exceptionally important role for racial minorities, and it accounts for much of racial minorities' higher levels of concern and participatory intentions compared with Whites. This study provides new perspectives to understand the racial differences in environmental concern and participation and has important implications for the environmental justice research and movement and environmental public policy.
The environmentally responsible behavior of employees at the workplace can benefit business organizations in particular and society in general. According to previous studies, positive psychological capital has been used frequently for predicting employees’ work attitudes and behaviors. In this article, we are seeking to understand whether people with a higher (lower) level of positive psychological capital − hopeful thinking, optimism, and resilience − engage more (less) in environmentally responsible behaviors in the workplace especially when they perceived a high (low) level of environmental justice To test the study hypotheses, we collected survey data from 196 randomly selected employees working in 35 private small-sized businesses in Bangladesh. This study showed that employees with higher levels of positive psychological capital engage more in environmentally responsible behaviors at the workplace. The results showed that when employees are treated fairly in the workplace, those with a high level of hopeful thinking and resilience are more likely to engage in environmentally responsible behaviors at work.
Purpose of Review
Power outages, a common and underappreciated consequence of natural disasters, are increasing in number and severity due to climate change and aging electricity grids. This narrative review synthesizes the literature on power outages and health in communities.
Recent Findings
We searched Google Scholar and PubMed for English language studies with titles or abstracts containing “power outage” or “blackout.” We limited papers to those that explicitly mentioned power outages or blackouts as the exposure of interest for health outcomes among individuals living in the community. We also used the reference list of these studies to identify additional studies. The final sample included 50 articles published between 2004 and 2020, with 17 (34%) appearing between 2016 and 2020. Exposure assessment remains basic and inconsistent, with 43 (86%) of studies evaluating single, large-scale power outages. Few studies used spatial and temporal control groups to assess changes in health outcomes attributable to power outages. Recent research linked data from electricity providers on power outages in space and time and included factors such as number of customers affected and duration to estimate exposure.
Summary
The existing literature suggests that power outages have important health consequences ranging from carbon monoxide poisoning, temperature-related illness, gastrointestinal illness, and mortality to all-cause, cardiovascular, respiratory, and renal disease hospitalizations, especially for individuals relying on electricity-dependent medical equipment. Nonetheless the studies are limited, and more work is needed to better define and capture the relevant exposures and outcomes. Studies should consider modifying factors such as socioeconomic and other vulnerabilities as well as how community resiliency can minimize the adverse impacts of widespread major power outages.
In this paper, environmental justice is considered from an interdisciplinary and integrative perspective that combines theories and studies in geography, environmental policy and planning with a justice psychology approach. This opens up an integrated view, which takes into account both societal and individual aspects of the perception and evaluation of environmental justice. In this sense, notions of environmental justice(s) are seen as the result of discursive processes, historical contexts and a social localization and standardization that is shaped by both cognitive evaluation processes and emotions. Additionally, environmental justice in participation processes is considered in the context of environmental and sustainability policy and its implementation, first summarising the points of criticism of participation processes and then discussing environmental justice as an aspect of participation practice. From this, some key points for a more justice-sensitive design of participation processes in the context of environmental and sustainability policies and programmes (e.g. adaptation to climate change, urban planning, energy system transformation) are derived. This interdisciplinary analysis shows that there is not 'one' environmental justice, but a multitude of ideas and evaluations based on different concepts and perceptions.
Objective
Excess emissions are pollutant releases that occur during periods of startups, shutdowns or malfunctions and are considered violations of the U.S. Clean Air Act. They are an important, but understudied and under-regulated, category of pollution releases given their frequency and magnitude. In this paper, we examine the demographic correlates of excess emissions, using data from industrial sources in Texas.
Methods
We conduct two complementary sets of analyses: one at the census tract level and one at the facility level. At the census tract level, we use a multinomial logit model to examine the relationships between racial, ethnic, and income characteristics and the incidence of excess emissions. At the facility level, we first estimate a logit model to examine whether these characteristics are associated with facilities that emit excess emissions, and then, conditional on the presence of excess emissions, we use ordinary least square regression to estimate their correlation with the magnitude of releases.
Results
Across our analyses, we find that the percentage of Black population and median household income are positively associated with excess emissions; percentage of college graduate, population density, median housing value, and percentage of owner-occupied housing unit are negatively associated with excess emissions. We, however, have not found a clear and significant relationship between the percentage of Hispanic population and excess emissions.
Maslow's hierarchy of needs (1970) depicts a simple, five-part pyramid with fundamental needs on the bottom and secondary needs near the top. The environmental hierarchy of needs theory, which pulls from Maslow's hierarchy, has commonly been used to suggest that ethnic groups hold less environmental concern and action than their White counterparts (Van Liere and Dunlap, 1980; Taylor, 1989; Mohai, 1990; Sheppard, 1995). The logic is as follows: sociological demographics suggest that minority populations tend to have lesser wealth and education. Therefore, minorities are more likely to focus on physiological needs necessary for survival, and in turn generally have less time and resources to allocate toward other problems. Environmental protection naturally becomes a secondary concern. This style of thinking was first popularized in the 1970s, with one widely cited study conducted by Hershey and Hill (1977). They found that there was a gap between White and African American students on their concerns for the environment. However, many of the cross-ethnic environmental studies conducted in the following decades have produced highly conflicting evidence with regard to the conceptualization of pro-environmental behaviors in different ethnic groups (for a review, see Head et al., 2018). In this article, we first review past studies on environmental belief and behavior selectively from both national surveys and regional representative samples (excluding convenience samples), paying attention to the emergence of ethnicity. These studies generated inconsistent answers to the question of how ethnic minorities respond to the environmental issue. Then, we argue that past studies overestimated the individual level of analysis, such as individual norms and beliefs, but underestimated the power of contextual analysis such as group norms, cultural orientations, and economic factors. We support our viewpoint by identifying conceptual and methodological issues that are important to consider for future research.
Power outage accidents will cause huge economic loss to the social economy. Therefore, it is very important to evaluate the economic loss of power outages. By summarizing the existing literature, this paper summarizes the economic impact caused by blackouts, and then it introduces the influence factors that cause the outage loss. Finally, the assessment methods to evaluate direct and indirect economic loss are summarized. Through the summary, it is found that there are many researches on direct economic loss of power outages, but there are few studies on the indirect economic loss of power outages. Finally, the application prospect of the power loss assessment methods is prospected.
What might it take for politically marginalized residents to challenge cuts in public spending that threaten to harm their health and wellbeing? Specifically, how did residents of Flint, Michigan contribute to the decision of an austerity regime, which was not accountable to them, to spend millions to switch to a safe water source? Relying on evidence from key interviews and newspaper accounts, we examine the influence and limitations of residents and grassroots groups during the 18-month period between April 2014 and October 2015 when the city drew its water from the Flint River. We find that citizen complaints alone were not sufficiently able to convince city officials or national media of widespread illness caused by the water. However, their efforts resulted in partnerships with researchers whose evidence bolstered their claims, thus inspiring a large contribution from a local foundation to support the switch to a clean water source. Thus, before the crisis gained national media attention, and despite significant constraints, residents’ sustained organization—coupled with scientific evidence that credentialed local claims—motivated the return to the Detroit water system. The Flint case suggests that residents seeking redress under severe austerity conditions may require partnerships with external scientific elites.
The impacts of the Flint Water Crisis (FWC) present municipal and state officials, emergency responders, community organizations, and residents with considerable uncertainties about how to reorganize and respond in the wake of tragedy. In addition to the collapse of infrastructure and governance systems, the community is experiencing a collapse of its communication and knowledge-sharing networks, specifically between those directly impacted by the crisis and those involved in the emergency response. In this article, we summarize what we learned from a community engagement process that took place in the winter and spring of 2016 after widespread acknowledgment of the FWC and review the (1) results of five "participatory modeling" workshops with residents carried out in the city of Flint and (2) results of a follow-up cultural consensus survey administered to Flint residents and FWC responders engaged in the recovery to evaluate the degree of agreement among actors about the dynamics of the FWC. The modeling exercise revealed that Flint residents perceive that long-term racial and economic marginalization and political disenfranchisement led to the FWC. Cultural consensus data indicate that nonresidents are less likely to share this view about the causes of the crisis; however, there was more agreement between Flint residents and nonresidents around the consequences of, and solutions to, the FWC. Agreement around potential solutions is encouraging, but if recovery efforts fail to address Flint residents' underlying concerns about long-term marginalization and disenfranchisement, there is a risk of further erosion of trust and communication between residents, state officials, and emergency responders.
Oklahoma is an oil and gas state where residents have historically been supportive of the industry. However, a dramatic increase in seismic activity between 2009 and the present, widely attributed to wastewater injection associated with oil and gas production, is a new and highly salient consequence of development. This research engages Oklahoma residents through open-ended interviews on their experience of and reaction to earthquakes. We use these interviews to characterize how energy narratives emerge in response to conflict between environmental outcomes and economic interest associated with a long-standing industry that is personally important to many in the state. We find that seismicity has fractured the dominant narrative of oil and gas development as important for the state into descendant narratives framing seismicity as a minor problem that will be resolved without affecting the oil and gas industry significantly, as a major problem that warrants opposition to the oil and gas industry, or as a problem that needs to be addressed, but not at the cost of all oil and gas development. Trust and a sense of personal efficacy are important in determining people’s reactions, and loss of trust in government is more widely observed than loss of trust in industry.
The Flint water crisis highlights numerous regulatory failures related to federal drinking water regulation, interpretation, and enforcement. The events that unfolded in Michigan, from the initial utilization of a corrosive water source to provide Flint's drinking water to the inadequate response of numerous regulators, demonstrate how the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) can be wrongly interpreted, implemented, and weakly enforced, leading to dangerous exposure to unsafe drinking water. Our objective is to discuss these regulatory failures in Michigan in 2014-2015 in the context of other reported incidents of U.S. cities with high levels of lead in drinking water. Like the people of Flint, many of the affected residents are living in economically depressed areas with high rates of racial minorities. The recurring trend of unsafe drinking water in communities with this demographic profile qualifies this as an issue of environmental injustice.
This article begins with a review and synthesis of some of the key theories, scholars, case examples, debates, methods, and (multiple) interpretations of environmental justice (EJ), as well as its expansion and globalization. We then look to some newly emerging themes, actions, and strategies for EJ and just sustainabilities. First, we look at the practices and materials of everyday life, illustrated by food and energy movements; second, the ongoing work on community and the importance of identity and attachment, informed by urban planning, food, and climate concerns; third, the growing interest in the relationship between human practices and communities and nonhuman nature. We also expand on the longstanding interest in just sustainabilities within this movement, illustrated by a wide range of concerns with food, energy, and climate justice. These new areas of work illustrate both recent developments and a set of paths forward for both the theory and practice of EJ. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Environment and Resources Volume 41 is October 17, 2016. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/catalog/pubdates.aspx for revised estimates.
This paper examines whether experience of extreme weather events—such as excessive heat, droughts, flooding, and hurricanes—increases an individual’s level concern about climate change. We bring together micro-level geospatial data on extreme weather events from NOAA’s Storm Events Database with public opinion data from multiple years of the Cooperative Congressional Election Study to study this question. We find evidence of a modest, but discernible positive relationship between experiencing extreme weather activity and expressions of concern about climate change. However, the effect only materializes for recent extreme weather activity; activity that occurred over longer periods of time does not affect public opinion. These results are generally robust to various measurement strategies and model specifications. Our findings contribute to the public opinion literature on the importance of local environmental conditions on attitude formation.
This article focuses on the discovery of themes and the content of the media's portrayal of the Exxon Valdez disaster. Identification of existing patterns of media coverage within the post-impact period of the Exxon Valdez oil spill will provide the foundation for analysis. It is the primary assumption of this research that the event will unfold as a saga in the news. This assumption of chronological sequence provides an important rationale. Specifically, this research will describe evolving relationships among community residents--and corporate, political, and military structures--so as to identify the role of trust in relationships among community stakeholders and these institutions. Secondly, the research will describe how the previously mentioned relationships change when citizens perceive the corporate, political, and military structures as untrustworthy.
In 1987 the United Church of Christ's (UCC) Commission for Racial Justice published its landmark report Toxic Wastes and Race in the United States. The report documented disproportionate environmental burdens facing people of color and low-income communities across the country. The report sparked a national grassroots environmental justice movement and significant academic and governmental attention. In 2007, the UCC commissioned leading environmental justice scholars for a new report, Toxic Wastes and Race at Twenty: Grassroots Struggles to Dismantle Environmental Racism in the United States. In addition to commemorating and updating the 1987 report, the new report takes stock of progress achieved over the last twenty years. Although Toxic Wastes and Race has had tremendous positive impacts, twenty years after its release people of color and low-income communities are still the dumping grounds for all kinds of toxins. Using 2000 Census data, an updated database of commercial hazardous waste facilities, and newer methods that better match where people and hazardous sites are located, we found significant racial and socioeconomic disparities persist in the distribution of the nation's hazardous wastes facilities. We demonstrate that people of color are more concentrated around such facilities than previously shown. People of color are particularly concentrated in neighborhoods and communities with the greatest number of facilities and racial disparities continue to be widespread throughout the country. Moreover, hazardous waste host neighborhoods are composed predominantly of people of color. Race continues to be the predominant explanatory factor in facility locations and clearly still matters. Yet getting government to respond to the needs of low-income and people of color communities has not been easy, especially in recent years when the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has mounted an all-out attack on environmental justice principles and policies established in the 1990s. Environmental injustice results from deeply-embedded institutional discrimination and will require the support of concerned individuals, groups, and organizations from various walks of life. The Toxic Wastes and Race at Twenty report condensed in this Article provides dozens of recommendations for action at the federal, state, and local levels to help eliminate the disparities. The report also makes recommendations for nongovernmental organizations and industry. More than one hundred environmental justice, civil rights, human rights, faith based, and health allies signed a letter endorsing these steps to reverse recent backsliding, renewing the call for social, economic, and environmental justice for all. Congress has begun to listen and take action.
Environmental justice has been a central concern in a range of disciplines, and both the concept and its coverage have expanded substantially in the past two decades. I examine this development in three key ways. First, I explore how early work on environmental justice pushed beyond many boundaries: it challenged the very notion of ‘environment’, examined the construction of injustice beyond inequity, and illustrated the potential of pluralistic conceptions of social justice. More recently, there has been a spatial expansion of the use of the term, horizontally into a broader range of issues, vertically into examinations of the global nature of environmental injustices, and conceptually to the human relationship with the non-human world. Further, I argue that recent extensions of the environmental justice frame move the discourse into a new realm – where environment and nature are understood to create the conditions for social justice.
Moving beyond the typical focus on individual injustices, we examine individual-level and contextual factors affecting perceptions of justice with regard to the environment. Specifically, we examine decision-making procedures pertaining to environmental resource use and harms across groups of people; the distribution of environmental harms; and the direct treatment of the natural environment (i.e., procedural environmental justice, distributive environmental injustice, and ecological injustice, respectively). To test our hypotheses, we use data from a survey administered to a cohort of first-year college students at a southeastern university. Results demonstrate that environmental identity and perceptions of the extent to which the university context encourages sustainability consistently enhance perceptions of all three types of justice. Other factors differentially affect each type of justice. We discuss the importance of the patterns that emerge for environmental and sustainability education and speculate on the implications of moving from thinking about (in)justice related to the environment as an individual issue to one of the collectivity.
Soil contaminated with heavy metals is a salient example of environmental risk. Consumption of vegetables cultivated in contaminated soil or direct ingestion of soil by small children can damage health. In contrast to other kinds of pollution or risks such as air pollution or exposure to ozone, the individual risk concerning soil contamination is highly dependent on the way one is exposed to the local source of risk. Thus, we wanted to know if risk perception varies according to the level of exposure. A quasi-experimental, questionnaire-based study was conducted in a community in northwest Switzerland, where the soil is widely contaminated. The level of contamination varies with the distance from the source of the contamination, a metal processing plant. We investigated the perception of risk of heavy-metal-contaminated soil by inhabitants with high-exposure levels (N = 27) and those with low-exposure levels (N = 30). Both groups judged the risk for oneself similarly whereas the low-exposure group, when compared to the high-exposure group, judged perceived risk for other affected people living in their community to be higher. Besides this exposure effect, risk perception was mainly determined by emotional concerns. Participants with higher scores in self-estimated knowledge tended to provide low-risk judgments, were less interested in further information, showed low emotional concern, and thus displayed high risk acceptance. In contrast, actual knowledge showed no correlation with any of theses variables. Judgments on the need for decontamination are determined by risk perception, less application of dissonance-reducing heuristics and commitment to sustainability. The desire for additional information is not affected by missing
knowledge but is affected by emotional concerns.
In 1993, Freudenburg suggested the term “recreancy” to refer to behaviors associated with institutional failures, which he distinguished from the consequences of such failures. This article revisits issues related to recreancy associated with the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill. Using qualitative data collected in Cordova, Alaska, between 2002 and 2010, we examine notions about recreancy and technological disasters. Findings highlight perceptions of institutional failures associated with the spill and cleanup activities, providing insights into the social consequences of such failures for those most directly affected by them, including loss of ontological security, the emergence of corrosive communities, and diminished social capital. We extend the discussion about recreancy to include organizational processes intended to address economic, social, and environmental consequences of technological disasters. Our data reveal a persistence of beliefs about recreancy associated with the Exxon Valdez oil spill and the subsequent litigation, and their consequences for long-term community impacts.
We explore the relationship between perceived and actual water quality in a rapidly growing, high-amenity rural area (Vilas County, WI) and how this relationship is affected by shoreline development. Although the data on the relationship between shore development and aquatic environs are not conclusive, people express high levels of concern about the environmental impacts of this type of growth. We link databases that include water quality and lakeshore development variables with a mail survey of 1000 local property owners. Although the shoreline development levels are unrelated to water quality variables such as turbidity, chlorophyll levels, and color, we find that lakes with higher levels of development are perceived by respondents as having worse water quality than lightly developed lakes. These findings have important implications for high-amenity rural communities that undergoing rapid development.
This article first discusses major misconceptions and limitations of research conducted in the United States on race and concern for the environment. An overview of four hypotheses pertaining to concern for the environment among blacks is then provided. Support for each hypothesis is judged by reviewing recent literature and by analyzing the National Opinion Research Center's (NORC) General Social Survey (GSS) trend data 1973–93. The overall evidence shows that concern for the environment is not just an issue for whites and that a “concern gap”; between whites and blacks probably does not exist. It also demonstrates that support among blacks for environmental protection did not decline more than it did for whites during hard economic periods. There is limited evidence to suggest that blacks place a slightly higher priority than do whites on improving the conditions of the social environment than on the state of the environment in general.
Although racial differences in satisfaction with urban services have been observed for decades, perhaps the most consistent finding in the literature on citizen satisfaction and urban service delivery, little systematic effort has been directed at explaining this gap. Using two years of survey data from New York City, the authors find that socioeconomic status (SES) and neighborhood of residence explain only a small part of the gap in satisfaction across a range of urban services. Residents’ trust of government appears to account for a fairly large proportion of the race gap. Still, significant differences in satisfaction remain between Whites, Blacks, and Hispanics for a number of services even after controlling for SES, neighborhood, and trust.
Utilizing a random sample of Oklahoma, USA residents, this paper examines the factors that are 1) associated with concern for the current state of the electrical grid in Oklahoma, and 2) associated with willingness-to-pay (WTP) for electrical grid improvements in the state. We develop a conceptual model using a risk perception framework and based on previous literature to hypothesize which variables should be related to our dependent variables (concern for the electrical grid, and WTP for improvements to the grid). We then test our conceptual model using a structural equation model (SEM). The results suggest that respondents who hold higher perceptions of weather-related risks and perceive more risks from electrical outages had greater concern for electricity infrastructure. Additionally, respondents who expressed less trust in those charged with electrical grid maintenance reported more concern for electricity infrastructure. The results for our second research question suggest that lower cost, respondents who were more politically liberal, non-white, trust grid maintenance, perceived risks of electrical outages and have concerns for the electrical grid infrastructure were all related to WTP for electrical grid improvements. We conclude the paper with implications of our findings and some brief recommendations for electrical grid concern and WTP for modernization.
Pluvial flooding is a serious hazard in inland U.S. cities. City managers and communities are increasingly interested in reducing their pluvial flood risk through the development of green infrastructure (GI) features. This research explores the relationship between pluvial flood exposure and GI placement in three inland cities–Atlanta, Phoenix, and Portland–and analyzes the variation of sociodemographic variables in census block groups (CBG)
located in pluvial flood zones. Using the Arc-Malstrøm method, we estimated areas of pluvial flooding in the CBGs of our selected cities by relating pluvial flood area to the density of GI in CBGs and assigning CBGs one of four classifications: i) managed (large flood area, abundant GI), ii) prepared (small flood area, abundant GI), iii) vulnerable (large flood area, scarce GI), and iv) least concern (small flood area, scarce GI). Then, using the historical GI data, we examined the proportionality of GI investment over time to pluvial flood area. We found relationships between GI density, flood area, ethnic and racial minority populations, age, educational attainment, and median household incomes that indicated inequalities and potential discrimination in flood risk management, but also some evidence of equitable and appropriate management given differences in flood risk, especially in Phoenix and Portland. In Atlanta, newer GI installation prioritized white and wealthy neighborhoods where relatively higher flood risk exists (less equitable). Our classification framework may assist city flood risk managers to distribute GI more equitably according to equitability and need.
Recent infrastructure failures in the United States have brought attention to the ways and extent to which water security is unevenly distributed in urban areas. For many marginalized communities, infrastructure interdependencies (e.g., water, wastewater, stormwater, transportation) have created significant vulnerabilities in the face of aging or inadequate water treatment and delivery systems. In these communities, cascading failures precipitated by environmental hazards such as flooding often propagate across multiple infrastructure systems, sometimes resulting in poor water quality and/or lack of access to water for significant periods. However, little is known about how specific environmental and social factors combine with water infrastructure vulnerability and interdependencies to create enduring infrastructure inequalities. This paper presents a geospatial vulnerability framework for identifying water infrastructure inequalities, using the City of Tampa, Florida, to demonstrate the framework. For this framework, we integrate geographic information systems (GIS) analysis of environmental hazards, a factor analytic model of sociodemographic data, and a network topology-based performance indicator for the water distribution network. The resulting framework models the environmental and social vulnerabilities, quantifies hydraulic vulnerability and infrastructure interdependence, and maps their distributions across the urban environment. We find that the highest levels of social and environmental vulnerabilities in Tampa are present in low-income areas and communities of color that have high hydraulic vulnerability and infrastructure interdependency, which creates pockets of low resilience capacity.
The risks associated with disasters can be significantly reduced if individuals are well prepared according to the orders and recommendations of emergency management authorities such as the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and local government. Despite this fact, there is evidence that individuals are not cooperative with these authorities and are therefore underprepared for an emergency. This article argues that individual trust in emergency management authorities may affect their cooperation with emergency preparedness recommendations. Using unique survey data, this study finds a nuanced relationship between individual emergency preparedness for tornadoes and trust in emergency management authorities. Although trust in FEMA in isolation does not explain variations in individual preparedness for tornadoes, increased preparation for a tornado is explained by trust in local government contingent upon a low baseline level of trust in FEMA. This article concludes with some practical and theoretical implications for emergency management authorities and scholars.
Objective
Compare the impact of being a racial minority for influencing political trust as measured by the standard, NES‐developed measures with its impact on assessments of the capacity of decisionmakers to make racially unbiased spending and hiring decisions. Additionally, to examine the political trust of American Indians, an understudied racial minority.
Methods
Bivariate and multivariate analysis of 2004 and 2008 National Annenberg Election Study survey data.
Results
Self‐designation as a racial minority exercises small, inconsistent effects on the standard measures of political trust and external efficacy. When citizens are asked whether Caucasian government officials make decisions on spending and hiring to advantage whites to the disadvantage of blacks and Hispanics, racial minorities state that they expect racial bias. American Indians reveal levels of political trust similar to those held by other racial minorities.
Conclusion
An increasingly multiracial society will experience considerable tensions as minorities distrust government decisionmakers of a different race. These tensions will continue to be exploited by ambitious political elites.
Vulnerability and resilience to extreme weather hazards are a function of diverse physical, social, and psychological factors. Previous research has focused on individual factors that influence public perceptions of hazards, such as politics, ideology, and cultural worldviews, as well as on socioeconomic and demographic factors that affect geographically based vulnerability, environmental justice, and community resilience. Few studies have investigated individual socioeconomic and racial/ethnic differences in public risk perceptions of the health hazards associated with extreme heat events, which are now increasing due to climate change. This study uses multilevel statistical modeling to investigate individual- and geographic-level (e.g., census tract level and regional) social, economic, and biophysical influences on public perceptions of the adverse health impacts associated with heat waves. Political orientation and climate change beliefs are the strongest predictors of heat wave health risk perceptions; household income also has a relatively strong and consistent effect. Contextual socioeconomic vulnerability, measured with a social vulnerability index at the census tract level, also significantly affects heat wave risk perceptions. The strong influence of political orientation and climate beliefs on perceptions of adverse health impacts from heat waves suggests that ideological predispositions can increase vulnerability to climate change.
This paper examines individual-level perceptions of knowledge levels, responsibility, and trust in the government's ability and willingness to mitigate the newfound earthquake hazard in Oklahoma. These earthquakes have increased in number and intensity since 2010 and are largely believed to be a by-product of wastewater injection wells from oil drilling, making them a new, politically complex hazard for residents to navigate. We conducted household level surveys with two communities in Oklahoma to examine the relationship between (a) an individual's belief that state and local government is knowledgeable about the new earthquake hazard; (b) individual perception that state and local government is responsible for protecting them from the earthquake hazard; and (c) their level of trust in state and local government's ability and willingness to mitigate the hazard. We find that individuals who perceive state and local government as more knowledge about the hazard, or more responsible for protecting them from the hazard, have a higher level of trust in government's ability and willingness to mitigate the earthquake hazard.
We coconstruct a series of autoethnographic reflections to offer analysis of the emotions involved in early social movement mobilization. Oil and gas extraction and production are deeply embedded in Oklahoma’s economic, political, social, and cultural milieu. Using Woods et al.’s ladder of emotions model, we consider the constraints faced by three different proenvironmental/antifracking activists in Oklahoma within the context of place-based activism. Emotion and place-based identities are central to the early stages and continuance of social movement organization. We call for greater attention to these dynamics and further study of the role of emotions in the emergence, ascendance, and abeyance of social movement activity.
Energy insecurity is a multi-dimensional construct that describes the interplay between physical conditions of housing, household energy expenditures and energy-related coping strategies. The present study uses an adapted grounded theory approach based on in-depth interviews with 72 low-income families to advance the concept of energy insecurity. Study results illustrate the layered components of energy insecurity by providing rich and nuanced narratives of the lived experiences of affected households. Defined as an inability to adequately meet basic household energy needs, this paper outlines the key dimensions of energy insecurity-economic, physical and behavioral- and related adverse environmental, health and social consequences. By thoroughly examining this understudied phenomenon, this article serves to raise awareness of an increasingly relevant issue that merits more attention in research and policy.
Claims of environmental injustice, human neglect, and racism dominated the popular and academic literature after Hurricane Katrina struck the United States in August 2005. A systematic analysis of environmental injustice from the perspective of the survivors remains scanty or nonexistent. This paper presents, therefore, a systematic empirical analysis of the key determinants of Katrina-induced environmental injustice attitudes among survivors in severely affected parishes (counties) in Louisiana and Mississippi three years into the recovery process. Statistical models based on a random sample of survivors were estimated, with the results revealing significant predictors such as age, children in household under 18, education, homeownership, and race. The results further indicate that African-Americans were more likely to perceive environmental injustice following Katrina than their white counterparts. Indeed, the investigation reveals that there are substantial racial gaps in measures of environmental injustice. The theoretical, methodological, and applied policy implications of these findings are discussed.
While experimental studies of local election officials have found evidence of racial discrimination, we know little about whether these biases manifest in bureaucracies that provide access to valuable government programs and are less tied to politics. We address these issues in the context of affordable housing programs using a randomized field experiment. We explore responsiveness to putative white, black, and Hispanic requests for aid in the housing application process. In contrast to prior findings, public housing officials respond at equal rates to black and white email requests. We do, however, find limited evidence of responsiveness discrimination toward Hispanics. Moreover, we observe substantial differences in email tone. Hispanic housing applicants were 20 percentage points less likely to be greeted by name than were their black and white counterparts. This disparity in tone is somewhat more muted in more diverse locations, but it does not depend on whether a housing official is Hispanic. Replication Materials: The data, code, and any additional materials required to replicate all analyses in this article are available on the American Journal of Political Science Dataverse within the Harvard Dataverse Network, at: http://dx.doi.org/10.7910/DVN/1HOVTU.
For policymaking to address public risk perceptions effectively, policymakers must have a clear understanding of the nature of public risks. Public opinion polls regularly solicit perceptions of risk toward a variety of topics. These assessments though, tend to be general with no specificity offered for a nuanced interpretation. Yet, there is good reason to assume that risk perceptions are not based on the same criteria. If true, policymakers may be unable to address risks adequately without a better understanding of the drivers of risk perceptions. This project focuses on two primary research questions. 1) Does the public weigh the risk associated with global climate change differently in specific sub-domains? 2) If so, which climate change sub-domains are various members of the public most concerned about when offering a general assessment of global climate change risk? We assess public risk perceptions of climate change in three sub-domains – public health, economic development, and environment and find that two of the three sub-domains are predictors of a general assessment of risk.
Do street-level bureaucrats discriminate in the services they provide to constituents? We use a field experiment to measure differential information provision about voting by local election administrators in the United States. We contact over 7,000 election officials in 48 states who are responsible for providing information to voters and implementing voter ID laws. We find that officials provide different information to potential voters of different putative ethnicities. Emails sent from Latino aliases are significantly less likely to receive any response from local election officials than non-Latino white aliases and receive responses of lower quality. This raises concerns about the effect of voter ID laws on access to the franchise and about bias in the provision of services by local bureaucrats more generally.
Substantial research documents higher pollution levels in minority neighborhoods, but little research evaluates how residents perceive their own communities’ pollution risks. According to “neighborhood stigma” theory, survey respondents share a cultural bias that minorities cause social dysfunction, leading to over-reports of dysfunction in minority communities. This study investigates perceptions of residential outdoor air quality by linking objective data on built and social environments with multiple measures of pollution and a representative survey of Chicago residents. Consistent with the scholarly narrative, results show that air quality is rated worse where minorities and poverty are concentrated, even after extensive adjustment for objective pollution and built environment measures. Perceptions of air pollution may thus be driven by neighborhood socioeconomic position far more than by respondents’ ability to perceive pollution. The finding that 63.5 % of the sample reported excellent or good air quality helps to explain current challenging in promoting environmental action.
Seeking to fill the gap on research regarding the hospitality industry in relation to the environment, this article examines the environmental peculiarities of the tourism industry. Applying a single framework, the article analyzes the antecedents of organizations’ perceptions of the environment by combining two theoretical approaches: institutional theory and the resource-based view. The study uses a structural equation model to analyze the data from 239 hotels in Spain. The findings show that a number of external factors (i.e., environmental regulation, stakeholders, and uncertainty) and internal factors (i.e., resources and capabilities) have different effects on managerial perceptions of the environment as a competitive opportunity. The study demonstrates that the attitude and perceptions of managers appear to be essential factors for investment in preventive environmental technologies. Among other findings, the study found that managers respond favorably to voluntary norms, rather than environmental legislation; stakeholder pressure seems to have a negative effect on managers’ perceptions of the competitive opportunity inherent in sustainability; and the availability of complementary resources encourages managers’ perceptions of sustainability as a competitive opportunity. These perceptions are behind the adoption of an environmental management scheme with a stronger focus on prevention strategies. The perception of this competitive advantage means that a manager is more likely to develop a proactive environmental management approach.
In this article it is argued that existing studies of Black environmentalism do not appropriately measure the environmental concerns and activities most relevant to Blacks and hence do not accurately reflect the extent to which African Americans are responsive on environmental issues. Using data that measure Black environmental concern and activity in communities threatened by hazardous industries to various degrees, the authors evaluate 2 competing sets of expectations regarding the manner in which these concerns and activities are affected by differential environmental threats to the community. They find that specific local concerns and activities depend, to some extent, on the nature of the threat from nearby industry, but that more general attitudes toward the regulation of industry and concern about the environment do not Reasons as to why this might be the case are discussed.
In the past, social psychological and cultural theories have been used to explain why blacks display lower levels of environmental concern than whites. The article argues that the environmental concern gap that exists between blacks and whites can be better understood by exploring the gap that exists between concern and action. In addition, several factors that influence the existence of an action gap, and the extent to which black groups can be mobilized around environmental issues, are identified. They are (1) level and type of affiliation with voluntary associations, (2) political efficacy, (3) recognition of advocacy channels, (4) access, (5) acquisition of social prerequisites, (6) psychological factors, (7) collective action, and (8) resource mobilization.
Ever since the Institute for Social Research began measuring political trust more than twenty years ago, racial differences have been noted. Since 1968 blacks have been notably less trusting than whites. The explanation most commonly offered is the political reality model. This note directly tests the political reality model by comparing the relationship of race to trust in two settings. One is the nation in 1984 and the second is a city where a black mayor and black administration had been in office for eight years. If the political reality model is correct, the relationship of being black to trust should be positive in the local setting, precisely the opposite of the negative direction in national samples. The political reality model performed well under this direct comparison. As others have found, the CPS trust questions measure in large part one's evaluation of incumbents. These incumbent evaluations are part of the political reality that blacks respond to in answering the trust questions. © 1988 by the American Association for Public Opinion Research.
Ten statements in the 1993 General Social Surveys that relate to general themes about the environment were reduced to three scales after factor analysis: Pro-Environment, Less-Growth, and Pro-Animal. These scales were regressed on social-economic characteristics of respondents (N = 1,268). It was found that (a) those with lower incomes and less education were more pro-environment and pro-animal, (b) Black respondents were more likely than White respondents to be more pro-environment, (c) younger respondents were more less-growth than older ones, and (d) women were more inclined than men to be supportive of animal rights. Most previous research has found that higher socioeconomic groups are pro-environment. This research suggests there is support to help the environment among lower socioeconomic groups, minorities, and women. There is reason for optimism about the future of the environmental justice movement and the mainstream environmental movement.
National survey data demonstrate that support of the federal government decreased substantially between 1964 and 1970. Policy preference, a lack of perceived difference between the parties, and policy dissatisfaction were hypothesized as correlates of trust and alternative explanations of this decrease. Analysis revealed that the increased distrust in government, or cynicism, was associated with reactions to the issues of racial integration and U.S. involvement in the Vietnam war. A curvilinear relationship was found between policy preference on these and other contemporary social issues and political cynicism. The minority favoring centrist policies was more likely to trust the government than the large proportion who preferred noncentrist policy alternatives. This complex relationship between trust and policy preference is explained by dissatisfaction with the policies of both political parties. The dissatisfied noncentrists formed highly polarized and distinct types: “cynics of the left,” who preferred policies providing social change, and “cynics of the right,” who favored policies of social control.
A large body of research demonstrates that race, class, and gender are key factors influencing the conditions, resources, and risks that groups and individuals experience and perceive within both "green" and built environments. However, at least one dimension remains relatively absent from the literature: age. The main argument of this article is that environmental sociology and justice studies would benefit from further consideration of how age-relations, birth cohort identities, and life course conditions relate to variations in environmental health, environmental conditions, and perceptions thereof. The purpose of this article is to encourage such explorations by providing an introduction to major concepts and definitions from critical aging theory and by offering suggestions as to how these concepts could be explored within an environmental justice framework. I first introduce definitions, theoretical concepts, and methodological issues germane to studies of aging and note possible explanations for the relative invisibility of matters of aging and the life course in sociological studies of environments and environmental justice. The final portion of the article presents brief illustrative examples from fieldwork in rural China, followed by suggested areas for further exploration.
Clear and consistent differences between blacks‘ and whites’ attitudes toward environmental issues were found in a stratified
random sample survey of 2,012 Florida preadults. Blacks were much less likely than whites to consider environmental quality
a serious problem worthy of community concern, to favor environmental goals, and to define pollution in complex terms; regression
analysis showed that these differences persisted even when factors thought to explain racial differences in attitudes—SES,
years of education, exposure to information, actual and perceived pollution levels, sense of efficacy—were taken into account.
Evidence suggests that even among children, racial differences in attitudes are not spurious, but indicate a divergence between
the black and white subcultures in interpretations of public issues