Environmental citizen complaints

Jonathan Mark Colmer, Mary Evans and Jay Shimshack

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

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)
JEL-codes: D78 K32 Q53 Q58 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 35 pages
Date: 2023-03-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ene, nep-env and nep-law
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http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/121326/ Open access version. (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Environmental citizen complaints (2023)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ehl:lserod:121326

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