Why Cities Adopt Climate Action Richard C. Feiock Local Governance - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Why Cities Adopt Climate Action Richard C. Feiock Local Governance Research Lab Florida State University rfeicok@fsuc.edu RCN Virtual Collaboratory Call #1: September 6, 2003

Salience of Cities • Source of the Problem – Cities and Urban Metropolitan Areas • Are accounting for increasing shares of population and production • Generate more than 2/3s of GHG emissions • Source of the Solution – Land Use Regulation – Zoning and Building Codes – Transpiration Infrastructure – Service Delivery

Climate Action in Cities Local governments are voluntarily getting involved in climate protection despite rationale to the contrary 100 Percentage of in-house & city wideInitiatives 90 80 70 60 50 Source: US Conference of Mayors In House 40 Community Wide 30 20 10 0

The Dilemma of Scale • GHG Reduction is a Global Common Pool Resource – Subject to Free Rider Problems • How Can Cities Overcome Free Rider Dilemma? – Motivations of Decision Makers – Targets of Behavior Change – Institutions – Social and Geographic Distribution of Impacts

Early Local Climate Research • First academic paper on topic: Collier, 1997 • Early research dominated by case studies that focused on “early joiner” or “best practice” cities and the functioning of specific climate networks – Findings emphasize role of co-benefits and policy entrepreneurs • Exclusive focus on explicitly climate-committed cities

Quantitative local climate research Large-n quantitative research began around 2008 The “first generation” of quantitative studies examined why cities adopted climate protection goals – MCPA or ICLEI – Adoption of climate goals does not necessarily translate into action The “second generation” of studies utilize different measures of climate policy implementation

Research Questions • What actions are municipal governments taking that abate local greenhouse gas emissions? • Why are municipal governments becoming involved in climate protection? • What explains the variation in the type and extent of city GHG-reducing actions? • What impacts can and do local efforts have on net GHG emissions?

12 Possible Explanations • Community climate concern/Environmentalism • Climate Risk/Geo-physical characteristics • Financial /Cost Savings • Service Co-Benefits • Partisanship/Ideology • Political/Intergovernmental mandates or incentives • Memberships Networks/Peer effects • Institutions/Career interest of decision makers • Capacity/Fiscal and Technical Resources • Interest groups and entrepreneurs • Regional collaboration networks

Research Highlights • Results depend on what is measured as climate action – Goals/Affiliations – Plans – Policy Adoption – Implementation – Targeted to government vs. community – Geographic scope is local or regional – Policy instruments • Extent to which they reduce GHG – Outcomes of policy action

Community Climate Concern Matters a Lot Rachel Krause (2011) Predicted probability of climate planning by cities with and without high climate concern

Political Market Approach Policy Demand - Problem severity – property rights - Interest groups’ demands • Growth machine development interests • Environmental interests Governmental Supply - Election driven politicians - Career advancement driven administrators

Scope of City Carbon Reduction Policies Urban Studies 2013 Governmental Community Independent Variables Operations At-Large Operations Supply-Side Factors Council-Manager Government .089** -.105** Separate Sustainability Office .234*** .124** Lacks of Funds -. 031 -.013 Conflict with Other Budget Priorities -.020 -.069*** Central City . 047 .004 Demand-Side Factors Public Support .039 .102** Business Group Support .075*** .113*** Environmental Group Support .004 -.000 Per Capita Personal Income .083 .007 Population .089* .063** Density .048* .047 Non Hispanic White -.027 -.062 Issue Salience .137*** .219*** Constant -.776 -1.180 Observations 479 477 Log likelihood -1375.59*** -1281.71*** Regression R 2 .22 .17

Entrepreneurs and Multilevel Governance Research Questions Roles of States and Local Entrepreneurs Theory Multilevel Governance Policy Entrepreneurship Research Design Survey and Measures Multilevel Analysis

Predictor Variable Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 Coeff. S.E. Coeff. S.E. Coeff. S.E. Result Level 1 Independent Variables Public Entrepreneurs Civic Entrepreneur 1.75*** 0.52 1.78*** 0.51 Elected Entrepreneur 0.83* 0.43 0.77* 0.43 Bureaucratic Entrepreneur -0.46 0.40 -0.42 0.40 Organized Interests Group Support Business Groups 0.06 0.16 0.06 0.17 Environmental Groups -0.57** 0.24 -0.58** 0.02 Civic Groups 0.31 0.31 0.34 0.30 Need or Problem Severity Public Awareness 1.02 0.50 0.93* 0.53 Population Density 0.30 0.24 0.29 0.30 City Capacity Separated Sustainability Office 0.50*** 0.11 0.51*** 0.11 City Utilities -0.62 0.55 -0.61 0.62 Control Variables Political Institutions Form of Government -0.57* 0.35 -0.61 0.38 Community Characteristics Population 0.71*** 0.25 0.68*** 0.24 Race -0.84 1.08 -0.77 1.25 Income 0.06 0.15 0.05 0.14 Level 2 Independent Variables Climate Change Advisory Groups -0.12 0.91 0.47 0.53 Climate Actions 0.08 0.06 0.05 0.05 GHG Report -0.65 0.43 -0.70*** 0.22 Fiscal Stress -0.16 0.18 -0.18* 0.10 14

The ICSD Project The Integrated City Sustainability Database (ICSD) -The first comprehensive nation-wide dataset of US municipal governments’ sustainability programs - The ICSD will harmonize data from seven nation-wide surveys of city sustainability programs conducted in 2010-2011 - All seven surveys included all cities with populations over 50,000 in their sampling frame; • Over 90% of all cities larger than 50,000 responded to at least one of these seven surveys; - Four surveys additionally included smaller cities.

ICSD Source Data Survey Name Sampling Frame Respondents Response Rate ICMA 8,569 local governments with a 2,176 25.4% population over 10,000 NLC 1,708 mayors in cities over 10,000 442 26.6% EECBG Grantee 970 municipal governments receiving 747 77.0% Implementation EECBG awards, including all cities (NSF Feiock) over 30,000 Implementation of 1,180 cities: all with pops over 50,000 and 679 57.5% Energy Efficiency and a random sample of 500 cities with pops Sustainability btwn 20,000 and 50,000 (IBM Foundation Feiock) National Survey of 601 cities with populations over 263 44.0% Sustainability Mgmt 50,000 (Hawkins UCF) Municipal Climate 664 cities with populations over 329 49.5% Protection 50,000 (Krause Indiana) Municipal Government 425 cities with populations over 255 60.0% Questionnaire 50,000 that have explicit involvement in (Krause UTEP) climate protection

Data Management and Processing Identifying similar questions across surveys and re- coding relevant data into a consistent form Imputing missing data within and across surveys Aggregating into 3 tiers of over-arching variables - Questions for which there is a direct match - Questions which measure the same concept or activity with different wording - Questions which measure different components of a broader concept

Link ICSD to Performance Survey data treat all programs as having equal impact although it is widely acknowledge that some programs have a much greater impact than others; - Develop a comprehensive set of generalizable weights that can be applied to estimate the relative climate impact of municipal programs or actions; - Expert panels of practitioners and scholar s • Transforming Local Government – Denver, April 23-25, 2014 -Expert panel of practitioners and scholars Enable cities and researchers to better use the data they already have to measure performance

RCN Project: An Institutional Analysis of Strong and Weak Mayor City Charters Chris Weible, David Carter, and Tanya Heikkila School of Public Affairs University of Colorado Denver & Rick Feiock, Cali Curley, and Aaron Deslatte Askew School of Public Administration and Policy Florida State University