COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH: Feeling the Squeeze: How Financial Stress Shapes Decision Making and Risk for Drinking Water Systems in U.S. Cities

在全国范围内，城市面临着巨大的财政压力，原因是对关键城市服务--包括饮用水、教育、交通、消防和住房--的需求增加，以及支持这些增长的需求所需的收入急剧下降。在财政紧张的情况下作出的决定可能会削弱这些关键城市服务的复原力，因为这会阻碍水管理者应对当今的挑战和规划不确定的未来，同时保持负担得起和公平的服务提供。因此，财政压力对数百万人所依赖的服务的复原力构成重大风险。尽管存在这些风险，但人们对财政压力对城市政府决策的影响以及地方政治、制度和自然环境对决策的影响知之甚少。该奖项支持将解决这一根本知识差距的基础研究。具体地说，这项研究将增进对财政压力影响饮用水系统(DWS)决策和恢复能力的方式的理解，产生可操作的知识，以提高饮用水系统的公平性和恢复力，生成一个新的可公开访问的数据库，并就财政压力、风险和恢复能力以及市政决策中的公平的交集对学生和水专业人员进行教育和培训。本研究采用一种新的混合方法对财务压力、财政行为和韧性之间的关系进行了实证和理论上的理解。这项研究还促进了人们对财政压力如何影响市政工作人员的决策和复原力的实际理解，并生成了一个新的、集成的、可公开访问的数据库，其中包括市政府支出和收入、政治和机构背景、饮用水系统状况和人口统计数据。这项研究的结果将为学者们理解财政压力、行为和弹性之间的关系及其对公共服务公平的影响提供新的理论见解，并为支持当前和未来提高公平弹性的有效干预提供可操作的见解。这项研究将培训博士后、研究生和本科生，包括那些来自代表不足的群体的学生，包括女性、有色人种学生和第一代学生，进行严格的跨学科研究和参与，并通过使用本研究开发的案例研究进行指导，接触到100多名学生。将通过出版物、会议、网络研讨会和案例研究进行广泛传播。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Across the nation, cities face immense fiscal stress brought about by the confluence of increased demands for critical city services – including drinking water, education, transportation, fire protection, and housing – and precipitous declines in revenues needed to support those increased demands. Decisions made under conditions of fiscal stress may erode and undermine the resilience of these critical city services by impeding the ability of water managers to respond to today’s challenges and plan for an uncertain future, while maintaining affordable and equitable service delivery. Financial stress therefore presents a significant risk to the resilience of the services upon which millions of people depend. Despite these risks, the effects of financial stress on decision-making by city governments and the influence of local political, institutional, and physical contexts on decision-making is poorly understood. This award supports fundamental research that will address this fundamental gap in knowledge. Specifically, this research will advance understanding of the ways that financial stress affects decision-making and resilience of drinking water systems (DWS), produce actionable knowledge that will improve equity and resilience of DWS, generate a new, publicly accessible database, and educate and train students and water professionals about the intersection of fiscal stress, risk and resilience, and equity in municipal decision making. This research advances empirical and theoretical understanding of the relationship between financial stress, fiscal behavior, and resilience using a novel mixed methods approach. This research also advances practical understanding of how financial stress affects decision making and resilience in municipal DWS and generates a novel, integrative, publicly accessible database of municipal government spending and revenue, political and institutional context, drinking water system conditions, and demographics. Results from this research will provide scholars with new theoretical insights for understanding the relationship between fiscal stress, behavior, and resilience and its implications for equity in public services, and provide actionable insights to support effective interventions to improve equitable resilience now and in the future. This research will train a postdoc and graduate and undergraduate students including those from underrepresented groups including women, students of color, and first-generation students in rigorous, interdisciplinary research and engagement and reach over 100 more students through instruction using case studies developed from this research. Broad dissemination will occur through publications, conferences, webinars, and case studies.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.