Timothy W. Collins

What Influences Hazard Mitigation? Household Decision Making About Wildfire Risks in Arizona's White Mountains∗

Through a study of human response to wildfire hazards, this article addresses the question: What influences hazard mitigation? Results from a household-level multiple regression analysis using structured survey, hazard exposure, and secondary data reveal that social vulnerability, place dependency, and contextual influences are important determinants of mitigation of wildfire hazards. Lower income and renter households engage in less mitigation than higher income and homeowner households; these findings reflect underlying issues of social vulnerability. The role of place dependency as a catalyst for mitigation is illustrated by results showing that longer term, full-time, and resource-dependent residents implement more mitigation measures than shorter term, part-time, and resource-independent residents. In relation to contextual influences, results reveal that apartment complexes and gated residential settings impede mitigation and dwelling cash value motivates mitigation at the household level. Findings suggest that wildfire protection programs, which have traditionally focused on public education, must be expanded to increase levels of household hazard mitigation. Interventions should target gatekeepers from the real estate, government planning, and residential property management institutions that are partly responsible for structuring residents” lives. For example, the provision of public cost-sharing programs could help alleviate the financial burdens of mitigation for low- and fixed-income households, and in contexts where renter–landlord tenure arrangements prevail (e.g., apartment complexes), mitigation plans could be more effectively implemented through collaboration among owners, property managers, and residents.

Influences on Wildfire Hazard Exposure in Arizona's High Country

Based on the case of wildfire hazards in Arizona forests, this article addresses the question: What influences hazard exposure? Like other locales in the U.S. West, the study area has developed as large wildfires have occurred with increasing frequency. Management interventions have traditionally been based on the hypothesis that unsafe conditions result from inadequate residential knowledge of wildfire hazards. Findings from a household-level multiple regression analysis using structured survey, hazard exposure, and secondary data provide little support for this approach and underlying hypothesis. Results reveal that other variables—corresponding to amenity values, reliance on fire insurance, place dependency, and housing contextual factors—are important predictors of household exposure to wildfire hazards. Findings have implications for theoretical understandings of wildfire hazards and hazard reduction efforts in private community landscapes.

Comparing Disproportionate Exposure to Acute and Chronic Pollution Risks: A Case Study in Houston, Texas

While environmental justice (EJ) research in the United States has focused primarily on the social distribution of chronic pollution risks, previous empirical studies have not analyzed disparities in exposure to both chronic (long-term) and acute (short-term) pollution in the same study area. Our article addresses this limitation though a case study that compares social inequities in exposure to chronic and acute pollution risks in the Greater Houston Metropolitan Statistical Area, Texas. The study integrates estimates of chronic cancer risk associated with ambient exposure to hazardous air pollutants from the Environmental Protection Agencys National-Scale Air Toxics Assessment (2005), hazardous chemical accidents from the National Response Centers Emergency Response Notification System (2007-2011), and sociodemographic characteristics from the American Community Survey (2007-2011). Statistical analyses are based on descriptive comparisons, bivariate correlations, and locally derived spatial regression models that account for spatial dependence in the data. Results indicate that neighborhoods with a higher percentage of Hispanic residents, lower percentage of homeowners, and higher income inequality are facing significantly greater exposure to both chronic and acute pollution risks. The non-Hispanic black percentage is significantly higher in neighborhoods with greater chronic cancer risk, but lower in areas exposed to acute pollution events. Households isolated by language--those highly likely to face evacuation problems during an actual chemical disaster--tend to reside in areas facing significantly greater exposure to high-impact acute events. Our findings emphasize the growing need to examine social inequities in exposure to both chronic and acute pollution risks in future EJ research and policy.

Situating Hazard Vulnerability: People’s Negotiations with Wildfire Environments in the U.S. Southwest

This article is based on a multimethod study designed to clarify influences on wildfire hazard vulnerability in Arizona’s White Mountains, USA. Findings reveal that multiple factors operating across scales generate socially unequal wildfire risks. At the household scale, conflicting environmental values, reliance on fire insurance and firefighting institutions, a lack of place dependency, and social vulnerability (e.g., a lack of financial, physical, and/or legal capacity to reduce risks) were found to be important influences on wildfire risk. At the regional-scale, the shift from a resource extraction to environmental amenity-based economy has transformed ecological communities, produced unequal social distributions of risks and resources, and shaped people’s social and environmental interactions in everyday life. While working-class locals are more socially vulnerable than amenity migrants to wildfire hazards, they have also been more active in attempting to reduce risks in the aftermath of the disastrous 2002 Rodeo-Chediski fire. Social tensions between locals and amenity migrants temporarily dissolved immediately following the disaster, only to be exacerbated by the heightened perception of risk and the differential commitment to hazard mitigation displayed by these groups over a 2-year study period. Findings suggest that to enhance wildfire safety, environmental managers should acknowledge the environmental benefits associated with hazardous landscapes, the incentives created by risk management programs, and the specific constraints to action for relevant social groups in changing human-environmental context.

Social and Spatial Inequities in Exposure to Flood Risk in Miami, Florida

AbstractAlthough environmental justice (EJ) research in the United States has traditionally focused on technological hazards such as air pollution or hazardous waste, the adverse and unequal impacts of Hurricane Katrina have prompted researchers to examine the EJ implications of natural events such as hurricanes and floods. This paper contributes to this emerging literature on EJ and social vulnerability to natural hazards by analyzing racial/ethnic and socioeconomic inequities in the distribution of flood risk exposure in the Miami Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA), Florida—one of the most hurricane-prone areas in the world and one of the most ethnically and socioeconomically diverse MSAs in the United States. Although previous studies have relied exclusively on the 100-year floodplain to assess the spatial extent of flood exposure, this study makes a systematic distinction between different types of flood zones on the basis of both the probability (100-year versus 500-year versus low/no risk) of flood...

Downscaling Environmental Justice Analysis: Determinants of Household-Level Hazardous Air Pollutant Exposure in Greater Houston

Environmental justice (EJ) research has relied on ecological analyses of coarse-scale areal units to determine whether particular populations are disproportionately burdened by toxic risks. This article advances quantitative EJ research by (1) examining whether statistical associations found for geographic units translate to relationships at the household level; (2) testing competing explanations for distributional injustices never before investigated; (3) examining adverse health implications of hazardous air pollutant (HAP) exposures; and (4) applying an underutilized statistical technique appropriate for geographically clustered data. Our study makes these advances by using generalized estimating equations to examine distributive environmental inequities in the Greater Houston (Texas) metropolitan area, based on primary household-level survey data and census block–level cancer risk estimates of HAP exposure from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. In addition to main statistical effects, interaction effects are modeled to examine whether minority racial or ethnic status modifies the effects of other variables on HAP cancer risk. In terms of main effects, Hispanic and black status as well as the desire to live close to public transit exhibit robust associations with HAP cancer risk. Interaction results reveal that homeownership and homophily (i.e., the desire to live among people culturally similar to oneself) are associated with higher HAP cancer risk among Hispanics and blacks but with lower risk among whites. Disproportionate risks experienced by Hispanics and blacks are attributable neither to dampened risk perceptions nor the desire to live close to work. These findings have implications for EJ research and practice in Greater Houston and elsewhere.

Characterizing vulnerability to water scarcity: The case of a groundwater-dependent, rapidly urbanizing region

Abstract Groundwater overdraft is a resource management issue that poses a threat for the security of communities. Impacts of groundwater overdraft are influenced by the biophysical and social contexts of water management. This paper presents a method for assessing vulnerability to water scarcity in spatial terms using biophysical and social indicators. A geographic information system was used to establish areas of vulnerability based upon hydrologic variability in water resource availability within a groundwater basin, three types of water management systems, and 10 sociodemographic characteristics. Our study area is in the rapidly urbanizing Arizona Central Highlands, located ~150km north of the Phoenix metropolitan region, USA. Results indicate that the most biophysically vulnerable places do not necessarily intersect with the most vulnerable populations and that local differences in vulnerability are interrelated, rather than independent, outcomes in a process of socioenvironmental transformation. Vulnerability is influenced by laws that deny access to local surface waters and lead to dependence on fossil groundwater, and by economic reliance on urbanization. Localities attempt to reduce vulnerability through the development of community water systems and the expansion of water frontiers. While such strategies may reduce local vulnerability, they are not sustainable solutions because they transfer risks to other places, and thus contribute to vulnerability elsewhere.

Environmental Health Injustice: Exposure to Air Toxics and Children's Respiratory Hospital Admissions in El Paso, Texas

Although much environmental justice research tacitly assumes that unequal environmental exposures produce geographic disparities in adverse health outcomes, very few empirical environmental justice studies have tested that assumption. This article does so by using estimates of exposure to air toxics disaggregated by emission source (point and mobile) to predict childrens hospitalization rates for both asthma and respiratory infections in El Paso, Texas. Air toxics emissions from most source categories were found to be significant predictors of childrens respiratory infection hospitalization rates, but not asthma hospitalization rates, at the census tract level. Findings suggest that sociospatial disparities in respiratory infection rates might be linked to environmental inequalities.

No Safe Place: Environmental Hazards & Injustice along Mexico's Northern Border.

This article examines spatial relationships between environmental hazards (i.e., pork feed lots, brick kilns, final assembly plants and a rail line) and markers of social marginality in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico. Juárez represents an opportunity for researchers to test for patterns of injustice in a recently urbanizing metropolis of the Global South. We use spatial-econometric modeling to predict the four unique hazard variables and a composite hazard variable using socio-demographic variables at the neighborhood level. Lower class and higher percentages of children and migrants were statistically significant predictors of composite hazard density. These results align with previous studies in the North. However, disaggregating these results by hazard type reveals important and counterintuitive differences in groups at risk based on the market-orientation of the hazard (i.e., domestic vs. transnational) and its location within the urban structure.

Unevenness in urban governance: stadium building and downtown redevelopment in Phoenix, Arizona

I examine sociospatial aspects of urban governance, focusing on the case of a downtown-redevelopment stadium project. In many US central cities, wider political economic processes have led to the formation of governance coalitions guided by the interests of private sector agents. The case of Bank One Ballpark in Phoenix, Arizona, demonstrates how political economic conditions were sources of an uneven bargaining context during the process of project negotiations. Because of this unevenness, interests of profiteers were favored at the expense of others. Organized resistance during each phase of stadium building and concentration of increasing revenues in the hands of fewer business operators reflect uneven consequences. These were desired outcomes of the corporate-led coalitions strategy for expansion through the manipulation of state authority and the exclusionary production of space. I expand the application of urban-regime analysis to examine the role of unevenness in local governance.