Location choice and environmental performance of toxic-releasing facilities in the United States
type: CreativeWork
description: Current efforts in the United States to reduce toxic chemical releases from facilities rely on information disclosure programs such as the Toxic Release Inventory (TRI). The disclosure intends to help local communities take information-based actions and generate pressure on the facilities to reduce emissions. However, depending on residents’ political resources for collective action and their education regarding the health risks related to pollution, communities’ pressure can vary, and is usually weak in poor, minority, and less educated communities. Facilities may react to community pressure after the information disclosure by moving away from or improving their environmental performance in the communities with stronger pressure, which usually have a high socio-economic status. This can lead to disproportionately high exposure of residents to toxic chemicals in those disadvantaged communities, which can aggravate the problem of environmental injustice. This dissertation seeks to empirically examine the responses of toxic-releasing facilities to community pressure in making their decisions to (re-)locate or to improve their environmental performance after the TRI information disclosure. The main body of this dissertation is composed of four distinct studies. The first three studies focus on facilities that existed before the TRI and continued operating after its first disclosure. The first study examines the effect of community socio-economic characteristics on the relocation decisions of facilities. The main results of this study show that facilities located in communities with high population density, high income, and high educational attainment have a higher likelihood of relocating; they are also observed to relocate into communities with low population density, low income, and low educational attainment on average. The next two studies examine the environmental performance of facilities. The second study examines the performance of facilities that relocated. Th…
abstract: Current efforts in the United States to reduce toxic chemical releases from facilities rely on information disclosure programs such as the Toxic Release Inventory (TRI). The disclosure intends to help local communities take information-based actions and generate pressure on the facilities to reduce emissions. However, depending on residents’ political resources for collective action and their education regarding the health risks related to pollution, communities’ pressure can vary, and is usually weak in poor, minority, and less educated communities. Facilities may react to community pressure after the information disclosure by moving away from or improving their environmental performance in the communities with stronger pressure, which usually have a high socio-economic status. This can lead to disproportionately high exposure of residents to toxic chemicals in those disadvantaged communities, which can aggravate the problem of environmental injustice. This dissertation seeks to empirically examine the responses of toxic-releasing facilities to community pressure in making their decisions to (re-)locate or to improve their environmental performance after the TRI information disclosure. The main body of this dissertation is composed of four distinct studies. The first three studies focus on facilities that existed before the TRI and continued operating after its first disclosure. The first study examines the effect of community socio-economic characteristics on the relocation decisions of facilities. The main results of this study show that facilities located in communities with high population density, high income, and high educational attainment have a higher likelihood of relocating; they are also observed to relocate into communities with low population density, low income, and low educational attainment on average. The next two studies examine the environmental performance of facilities. The second study examines the performance of facilities that relocated. Th…
author: Wang, Xiao
language: en
keywords: Location Choice, Information Disclosure
date published: 2020-03-02T21:58:14Z
date modified: 2026-07-22T22:24:45Z
provider: University of Illinois - Urbana-Champaign
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

PropertyValue
property ID: Handle
value: http://hdl.handle.net/2142/106201