Effects of environmental stressors on daily governance
Name
8710.full.pdf
Description
Published version
Size
13.4 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
0763c927b46bb59dfde30d087104b12c
Author(s)
Obradovich, Nicholas
Tingley, Dustin
Rahwan, Iyad
Date Issued
August 2018
Journal
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Publisher
National Academy of Sciences
Citation
Obradovich, Nick et al. "Effects of environmental stressors on daily governance." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 115, 35 (August 2018): 8710-8715 © National Academy of Sciences
Version
Final published version
Abstract
Human workers ensure the functioning of governments around the world. The efficacy of human workers, in turn, is linked to the climatic conditions they face. Here we show that the same weather that amplifies human health hazards also reduces street-level government workers' oversight of these hazards. To do so, we employ US data from over 70 million regulatory police stops between 2000 and 2017, from over 500,000 fatal vehicular crashes between 2001 and 2015, and from nearly 13 million food safety violations across over 4 million inspections between 2012 and 2016. We find that cold and hot temperatures increase fatal crash risk and incidence of food safety violations while also decreasing police stops and food safety inspections. Added precipitation increases fatal crash risk while also decreasing police stops. We examine downscaled general circulation model output to highlight the possible day-to-day governance impacts of climate change by 2050 and 2099. Future warming may augment regulatory oversight during cooler seasons. During hotter seasons, however, warming may diminish regulatory oversight while simultaneously amplifying the hazards government workers are tasked with overseeing.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Media Laboratory
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Institute for Data, Systems, and Society
Terms of Use
Article is made available in accordance with the publisher's policy and may be subject to US copyright law. Please refer to the publisher's site for terms of use.
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1803765115
