Abstract We investigate the impact of industrial facility relocation on the distribution of pollution incidence across different socioeconomic groups in the US. While facilities that relocated reduced their emissions by 68% relative to 1990, the extent of their reduction was 22% points lower than had they not relocated. We also find that most facilities moved to communities with lower income compared to their origin communities and that these facilities reduced their emissions by less than facilities that moved to higher income communities. Relocations resulted in larger emissions reductions in population dense locations, as facilities relocated primarily to lower density areas.
Wang et al. (Sun,) studied this question.