Community Homogeneity and Revealed Preferences for Environmental Goods

This paper examines the links between community homogeneity and the demand for environmental quality. Using data from California, this paper shows that communities that are more homogeneous in terms of race and educational attainment are more likely to support the public provision of environmental goods, after controlling for political ideology, voter turnout, and the distribution of benefits and costs across communities. The models also reveal nonmonotonic relationships between racial and social groups and support for the public provision of environmental amenities. Support for environmental initiatives in a community typically increases at an increasing rate the greater the concentration of whites. On the other hand, support generally increases at a decreasing rate the greater the share of African-Americans and Asians in the population. Results for a proposal that would have imposed a tax on oil extraction to fund alternative energy projects suggest a different pattern of non-linear associations.