Investigating Linkages Between Public Policy Decisions and Environmental Equity Concerns

有证据表明，贫困和少数民族社区遭受的环境危害程度过高，这促使公民团体动员起来，这些团体向政府官员施压，要求他们采取行动缓解这些问题。环境不平等的未知来源提出了更多的问题。政府行为是否对环境污染带来的不公平风险负有直接责任？迄今为止，公共政策对环境不平等的影响一直被视为一个需要纠正的问题，而不是一个需要检验的假设。本研究将评估环境保护政策决策的分配后果。这项研究将确定政策决定是否会产生不平等的风险。如果是这样，产生这些政策结果的过程将被检查。一个环境政策制定的模型将被提出和测试。该模型将提供洞察市场激励对污染控制的影响，以及政府政策可以增加或减轻环境不平等的方式。

Evidence that poor and minority neighborhoods suffer disproportionate levels of exposure to environmental hazards has mobilized citizen groups, and these groups have pressured governmental officials for action to alleviate the problems. The unknown source(s) of environmental inequities raises additional questions. Are government actions directly responsible for inequitable risks from environmental pollution? To date, the contribution of public policy to environmental inequity has been viewed as a problem to be remedied rather than a hypothesis to be tested. This research will evaluate the distributional consequences of policy decisions in environmental protection. The research will establish whether policy decisions produce unequal risks. If so, the processes that generate these policy outcomes will be examined. A model of environmental policymaking will be offered and tested. The model will provide insight into the consequences of market incentives on pollution control as well as the ways in which government policy can increase or alleviate environmental inequities.