Effects of environmental stressors on daily governance
Author(s)
Obradovich, Nicholas; Tingley, Dustin; Rahwan, Iyad
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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.
Date issued
2018-08Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Media Laboratory; Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Institute for Data, Systems, and SocietyJournal
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
ISSN
0027-8424
1091-6490