‘Optimal’ pollution abatement—whose benefits matter, and how much?

Abstract

We examine the determinants of environmental regulatory activity (inspections and enforcement actions) and levels of air and water pollution for 409 US pulp and paper mills, using data for 1985-1997. We focus on the benefits to the surrounding population from pollution abatement. Plants with larger benefits emit less pollution, as do those with more kids and elders nearby. Plants in poor areas emit more pollution, though (surprisingly) we find less pollution in minority areas. Out-of-state neighbors seem to count less than in-state ones, although this effect diminishes if the bordering state's Congressional delegation is strongly pro-environment. We use 'spatially lagged' instrumental variables to control for the potential endogeneity of which individuals choose to locate near the plant. The results for regulatory activity are noticeably less significant than the emissions results. r

Supply Chain Coordination and Consumer Awareness for Pollution Reduction

“…Weil [42] showed that larger firms, typically generating larger pollution, not only have higher probabilities of being subject to regulator's inspections, but also pay substantially higher fines per violation of sustainability standards than small firms. Similarly, Gray and Shadbegian [31] showed that regulators conduct more pollution-related inspection and enforcement to larger plants. The recent decision of China to impose fines total 26 million dollars to six companies about their pollution violations, the biggest environmental pollution case in China, also supports this assumption [43].…”

“…Similarly, Chung et al [29] specified two sources of manufacturer's pollution emission, one due to the plant operations, e.g., the size of the capacity, independent of production rate and the other due to and proportional to the production rate. There is no shortage of empirical studies, which reported that the plant capacity is related with the firm's pollution emission rate, e.g., a plant with a larger capacity emits more pollution and thus has lower environmental performance [30][31][32][33][34]. We conjecture that as long as the firm utilizes its capacity sufficiently, the firm's pollution emission rate is proportional to its plant capacity, which in turn is closely related with its production rate.…”

“…If the manufacturer does not make any effort to reduce the pollution, it emits pollution as much as Ul at t, i.e., the amount of pollution emission is proportional to the manufacturer's capacity [31][32][33]: one unit of capacity emits l units of pollution. If the manufacturer's effort level to reduce the pollution is v, one unit of capacity emits only pl´vq units of pollution.…”

Enterprise-Level Motivations, Regulatory Pressures, and Corporate Environmental Management in Guangzhou, China

“…Such consequences may be positive (e.g., better relations with government authorities, a better brand name image) or negative (e.g., poor relations with government authorities, bad corporation reputation), direct (e.g., fines/fees or a threat of closure by local authorities), or indirect (e.g., a newspaper article). The other refers to the saliency of the fines/fees that are directly associated with regulatory noncompliance (Gray and Shadbegian 2004;Thornton et al 2005). Saliency here refers to how significant the fines/fees are relative to overall enterprise expenditures.…”

Distribution and contamination of metals in the soil of Guandu Watershed

“…Exposure and uptake of even a small fraction of soil-bound metal by organisms could have a significant toxicological effect, particularly where circumstances favour bioavailability. In addition, increased metal concentrations in pore water may further enhance soil toxicity (Gray and Shadbegian, 2004).…”