1 SOURCES OF REGULATORY COMPLIANCE BIAS AND ITS IMPLICATIONS FOR ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE

Recent research finding race- and class-based disparities in government enforcement of environmental laws has failed to provide a theoretically-grounded account of this bias ’ origin. We address this shortcoming by providing a micro-level explanation of how demographic characteristics influence the dual-agent – firm and regulatory officer – production function of regulatory compliance. Central to our argument is that compliance bias derives, at least in part, from bureaucrats ’ incentive structures. To empirically test our argument, we use an original dataset on community mobilization and agency structure that carefully delineates the local decision-making contexts of regulatory officers implementing the U.S. Clean Air Act and detection controlled estimation to correct for and model compliance bias. We find that while Hispanic communities are particularly vulnerable to compliance bias, such bias is mitigated in the presence of either politically mobilized communities or decentralized enforcement authority with the implementing agency. 2 Equal protection under the law is a fundamental principle of democratic public policy