Environmental citizen complaints

Jonathan Colmer (), Mary Evans and Jay Shimshack

CEP Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Performance, LSE

Abstract: Citizen complaints feature prominently in public oversight contexts. The nature and effects of complaints, however, are controversial and poorly understood. We first investigate attitudes about citizen complaints using a nationally representative survey. We document that the public believes complaints promote open, efficient, and equitable governance. We then exploit novel administrative data on over 130,000 complaints in Texas to investigate their observed dynamic effects on regulator behavior. Empirically, complaints are associated with sharp increases in regulator monitoring and enforcement. Complaints uncover more, and more severe violations, than more standard monitoring approaches. Overall, our findings are consistent with complaints enhancing regulatory efficiency.

Keywords: citizen complaints; environmental regulation; compliance; monitoring and enforcement; pollution (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023-03-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-des, nep-env and nep-law
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https://cep.lse.ac.uk/pubs/download/dp1903.pdf (application/pdf)

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Working Paper: Environmental citizen complaints (2023)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cep:cepdps:dp1903

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