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Equal Partners at Every Level of Decision Making: Environmental Justice and the Policy Process

Eckerd, Adam Michael
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1306513752

Abstract Details

2011, Doctor of Philosophy, Ohio State University, Public Policy and Management.
Public policies affect a wide range of stakeholders, intentionally and unintentionally, individually and collectively. Environmental policy, in particular, can affect the social and natural environments, and have broad effects beyond those intended by policymakers. This dissertation represents an effort to confront these complications by focusing on the socioeconomic equity effects of a set of environmental policies. Using a framework that encompasses a holistic approach to public policy and management research, the dissertation consists of three related projects that, taken together, describe in deep detail the how environmental policy decision making is affected by concerns over environmental justice. The first project is an aggregate evaluation into how the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) prioritizes the cleanup of hazardous sites nationwide. Using data from the EPA and U.S. Census, quantitative analysis reveals that the EPA tends to prioritize those sites deemed most risky, and that sites located in predominantly minority communities may proceed more slowly through the initial phases of the cleanup process, but are not less likely to ultimately be cleaned up than other sites. The second study is an investigation of three cases of localized projects that affect community environmental conditions. Using the comments provided during the preparation of three Environmental Impact Statements (EISs), this qualitative, exploratory project sheds light on the propensity of high socioeconomic status residents to engage in collectively organized action as compared to lower socioeconomic status residents, but finds that such collective action is of limited efficacy in achieving parochial interests of community residents. The third project is an attempt to explore the potential effects on neighborhoods of the mitigation of environmental risk. With little empirical data available to directly assess these affects in the aggregate, this project uses an agent-based model to simulate several counterfactual policy alternatives to determine the relative advantages of different strategies in terms of mitigation environmental risk, and of doing so as equitably as possible.
Anand Desai, PhD (Advisor)
Craig Boardman, PhD (Committee Member)
Andrew Keeler, PhD (Committee Member)
Stephanie Moulton, PhD (Committee Member)
267 p.
Public Administration; Public Policy
environmental justice; environmental policy; public participation; policy analysis; public management

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Eckerd, A. M. (2011). Equal Partners at Every Level of Decision Making: Environmental Justice and the Policy Process [Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1306513752

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Eckerd, Adam. Equal Partners at Every Level of Decision Making: Environmental Justice and the Policy Process. 2011. Ohio State University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1306513752.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Eckerd, Adam. "Equal Partners at Every Level of Decision Making: Environmental Justice and the Policy Process." Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University, 2011. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1306513752

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

osu1306513752
552
© 2011, all rights reserved.
This open access ETD is published by The Ohio State University and OhioLINK.