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Does Being a " Top 10 " Worst Polluter Affect Facility Environmental Releases? Evidence from the U.s. Toxic Release Inventory

The Toxic Release Inventory (TRI), which the United States Congress enacted in 1986, is the largest “Right to Know” program in the world. Each year over 20,000 facilities are required to report their emissions of hundreds of toxic chemicals to the government for dissemination to the public. Facilities that comprise the “Top 10” worst polluters within states not only emit a hugely disproportionate share of total U.S. environmental releases, but receive significant negative attention from the media, citizen’s groups, and non-governmental organizations. This paper uses exogenous changes to pollution rankings within states (due to the expansion of the industries covered by the TRI in 1998) as a way to test whether being labeled a “Top 10” worst polluter affected a facility’s total environmental releases. The results indicate that firms did respond to the “Top 10” worst polluter identification. Facilities that experienced an unexpected downward shift in their rankings, which led to their removal from the “Top 10” rankings within their states, reduced their emissions by hundreds of thousands of pounds less than they would have had they not experienced the drop in their rankings brought about by the introduction of the new highly polluting industries.