{"title":"The diversity we breath: Community diversity and gas leak management","authors":"Felipe Jordán , Enrico Di Gregorio","doi":"10.1016/j.regsciurbeco.2024.104037","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Diversity might reduce the ability of small-scale communities to protect local resources through its adverse impact on collective action and individual attachment. Using geocoded data on more than 1500 Grade-3 gas leaks in 2016 across Boston and Cambridge, MA, we show that when a leak emerges in a narrowly-defined area with higher ethno-racial fractionalization it enjoys lower chances of end-year reparation. After accounting for socio-economic and infrastructural factors, our preferred estimate suggests that moving from the 10th to the 90th percentile of the fractionalization distribution is associated to a 5.7 percentage point decrease in the probability of reparation, compared with an already low average of 3.7%. This result is robust to different definitions of the community surrounding a leak and to the inclusion of competing measures of diversity. Consistent with our framework, social capital appears to be especially lower in communities fragmented across ethno-racial lines. In turn, lower social capital is negatively associated to leak reparation.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":48196,"journal":{"name":"Regional Science and Urban Economics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.5000,"publicationDate":"2024-06-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Regional Science and Urban Economics","FirstCategoryId":"96","ListUrlMain":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0166046224000681","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"ECONOMICS","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Diversity might reduce the ability of small-scale communities to protect local resources through its adverse impact on collective action and individual attachment. Using geocoded data on more than 1500 Grade-3 gas leaks in 2016 across Boston and Cambridge, MA, we show that when a leak emerges in a narrowly-defined area with higher ethno-racial fractionalization it enjoys lower chances of end-year reparation. After accounting for socio-economic and infrastructural factors, our preferred estimate suggests that moving from the 10th to the 90th percentile of the fractionalization distribution is associated to a 5.7 percentage point decrease in the probability of reparation, compared with an already low average of 3.7%. This result is robust to different definitions of the community surrounding a leak and to the inclusion of competing measures of diversity. Consistent with our framework, social capital appears to be especially lower in communities fragmented across ethno-racial lines. In turn, lower social capital is negatively associated to leak reparation.
期刊介绍:
Regional Science and Urban Economics facilitates and encourages high-quality scholarship on important issues in regional and urban economics. It publishes significant contributions that are theoretical or empirical, positive or normative. It solicits original papers with a spatial dimension that can be of interest to economists. Empirical papers studying causal mechanisms are expected to propose a convincing identification strategy.