Units of Analysis and the Environmental Justice Hypothesis: The Case of Industrial Hog Farms

Michael Taquino, Domenico Parisi and Duane A. Gill

Social Science Quarterly, 2002, vol. 83, issue 1, 298-316

Abstract: Objective. In environmental justice research, different‐sized units of analysis have generated mixed results, begging the question of what constitutes the most appropriate unit of analysis. Grappling with this question raises both conceptual and methodological issues. In this article, it is argued that, conceptually, community should be the most important unit of analysis and that, methodologically, units should be selected through an appropriate sampling procedure. These issues are addressed through an investigation of the locations of industrial hog farms in Mississippi. Methods. A geographic information system procedure was used to identify community areas and to select the sample of units. The identified community areas were compared to counties, ZIP code areas, census tracts, and census block groups through a bivariate and multivariate logistic regression. Results. Race was the only variable that was consistently not found to be significant across all units. For the remaining variables—income, education, and industry—results were mixed across units. Conclusions. This research confirms that units of different size generate different results. We argue that the decision about the most appropriate unit of analysis should be conceptually rather than statistically determined and that community is the most important unit of analysis because it holds both legal and social authority to raise concern about environmentally controversial facilities.

Date: 2002
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/1540-6237.00084

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bla:socsci:v:83:y:2002:i:1:p:298-316

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.blackwell ... bs.asp?ref=0038-4941

Access Statistics for this article

Social Science Quarterly is currently edited by Robert L. Lineberry

More articles in Social Science Quarterly from Southwestern Social Science Association
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().