Social capital, environmental justice and carcinogenic waste releases: US county-level evidence, 1998–2019

Ataullah, Ali; Coleman, Simeon; Le, Hang and Wang, Zilong (2023). Social capital, environmental justice and carcinogenic waste releases: US county-level evidence, 1998–2019. Regional Studies (Early access).

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/00343404.2022.2159023

Abstract

We examine the role of social capital in explaining the highly unequal regional distribution of firms’ carcinogenic releases. Our model predicts that social capital, by enabling information-sharing and coordination among community members, decreases carcinogenic releases. Our analysis, based on the US county-level releases derived from around 2 million chemical-facility-level reports during the period 1998–2019 and the instrumental variables approach, confirms our prediction. However, the impact is reduced when counties rely on waste-releasing firms for economic opportunities. An important policy implication of our study is that the efficacy of initiatives to alleviate environmental injustice is likely to depend on communities’ social capital.

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