Defining Environmental Justice Communities for Regulatory Enforcement: Implications from a Block‐Group‐Level Analysis of New York State

Abstract

The absence of a clear

Regulatory Effectiveness and Social Equity in Environmental Governance: Assessing Goal Conflict, Trade-Off, and Synergy

“…Specifically, the effect size of this variable is substantially larger in punitive actions that solve existent problems than in inspections that detect potential problems. These findings comport with prior studies, substantiating the significant effects of risk-related task environments on public agencies’ policy implementation pattern, independent of the possible effects of equity-related factors (Eckerd & Keeler, 2012; Hird, 1993; Konisky & Reenock, 2013; Konisky & Schario, 2010; Liang, 2016a). Policy intervention aimed at promoting social equity is anticipated to stimulate changes in administrative agency’s behavior.…”

“…Taking together the evidence, this study echoes two interrelated implications from previous research. First, given the existing equitable delivery of public services to all social members, equity-oriented policy may have limited efficacy “if there is little or no inequity to amend” (Liang, 2016a, p. 13). But in some instances, the state agency still allocates more resources to target areas in response to the expectations of policy mandates.…”

“…Meanwhile, adopting such a policy is likely to give rise to trade-offs in other goal domains, as this study finds in regulatory effectiveness. The second implication is that without taking into account the condition of environmental risks in local communities, which directly corresponds to goal of regulatory effectiveness, equity-oriented policy that exclusively considers demographic and socioeconomic dimensions may displace administrative resources and efforts, but meanwhile contributes little to alleviating the actual environmental burdens unevenly faced by people of social justice concern (Liang, 2016a).…”

“…As discussed earlier, in the post-Executive Order 12898 era, people of color and low-income communities remain, to a varying extent, more likely to experience environmental policy implementation inequalities. Also, at both federal and state levels, environmental policy design that explicitly integrates the consideration of social justice has limited efficacy (Dull & Wernstedt, 2010;Konisky, 2009bKonisky, , 2015Liang, 2016a;Ong, 2012). Plausibly, the implementation of policies aimed at advancing environmental equity is complicated by public agencies' uneasy balancing of the established, statutory mandates (i.e., effectively enforcing regulations) and the emergent, programmatic requirements (i.e., promoting social justice).…”

Representative Bureaucracy, Distributional Equity, and Environmental Justice

“…Governmental actions in environmental policy, specifically those advancing equity or redressing inequity, have redistributional effects and implications, even though the goal of environmental policy is predominantly regulatory (Konisky , 4; Lazarus ; Liang ; Ringquist and Clark ; Torres ) 3. The pursuit of environmental equity through policy making has long been surrounded by concerns regarding whether and the extent to which government's proactive policies and practices lead to the redistribution of public resources and, ultimately, environmental and health outcomes among different subpopulations (Holifield ; Liang ).…”