Chennai: Researchers from Lancaster University Management School and Texas Tech University, who studied potentially polluting firms across Texas, have found a correlation between lower income locations and the probability of potentially polluting firms choosing to locate there.
Their data, from the US Environment Agency’s Toxic Release Inventory also showed the relative frequency of toxic releases decreased as household income rose.
Published in European Economic Review, the study looked into the relationship between the location choices of potentially polluting firms and levels of local income to discover if firms made strategic decisions on site locations based on population demographics.
Co-author Professor Dakshina De Silva, of Lancaster University’s Department of Economics, said, ‘We looked both at whether firms made decisions on their location based on demographics – particularly income – of the local areas, and also whether firms made different choices on limiting the possibilities of toxic release through waste management based on those same statistics.’