The effectiveness‐equity tradeoff when resources decline: Evidence from environmental policy implementation in the U.S. states

• Published date: 01 September 2024
• Author: Sanghee Park,Jiaqi Liang
• Date: 01 September 2024
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/puar.13784

RESEARCH ARTICLE

The effectiveness-equity tradeoff when resources decline:

Evidence from environmental policy implementation in the

U.S. states

Sanghee Park

1

| Jiaqi Liang

2

1

Boise State University, Boise, Idaho, USA

2

University of Illinois Chicago, Chicago,

Illinois, USA

Correspondence

Sanghee Park, Boise State University, Boise,

ID, USA.

Email: sangheepark@boisestate.edu

Abstract

Despite a voluminous literature on resource availability and the implications for

organizational performance, little is known about how changes in government

agencies’resources impact their policy implementation activities and goal prioriti-

zation. This article explores how changes in resources affect regulatory enforce-

ment activities by types of resources and policy implementation activities, and

whether resource cutbacks prompt a tradeoff of the effectiveness-equity goals.

Using the block-group level data on the Clean Air Act (CAA) implementation from

2012 to 2019, we find that state environmental agencies prioritize regulatory effec-

tiveness over environmental justice by concentrating their resources on communi-

ties where task demands correspond to organizations’core missions. They also

promote social equity to some extent when facing spending cutbacks but not

staffing cuts. Spending cutbacks had a less severe impact on compliance inspec-

tions for more socially vulnerable communities, while those exposed to more

imminent environmental harms received more inspections.

Practitioner points

•The impact of resource cutbacks on policy implementation depends on the

types of resources and enforcement activities involved.

•State agencies under cutbacks tend to prioritize regulatory effectiveness over

environmental justice.

•State agencies can mitigate the negative effect of spending cutbacks on socially

vulnerable communities, depending on the severity of environmental harms

faced by a community.

•Staffing cutbacks are likely to be more detrimental to governments’efforts to

attain social equity.

INTRODUCTION

Government agencies are often under resource constraints

that force them to prioritize where, when, and how to

implement policies corresponding to different goals and

institutional logic. Nevertheless, little is known about how

different types of resources affect policy implementation

outputs and how changes in resources available to public

organizations affect their goal prioritization. Further, the link

between resource cutbacks and goal commitment in gov-

ernment agencies remains unclear, particularly its impact on

two important organizational goals, effectiveness and

equity, which are more or less in tension. This study

explores how government agencies have grappled with a

balance between effectiveness and equity, which requires

different strategies and activities (Biber 2009; Shalala 1998).

In the setting of environmental policy, this study

examines two questions: first, how changes in govern-

ment agencies’resources, particularly reduction or con-

traction, affect their policy implementation outputs,

which commit to different organizational goals. We pay

special attention to governmental responses during

resource cutbacks because a decremental change has a

clear bearing on goal dynamics and prioritization, and

more so in our study context. Compared to expansion, a

rich line of research has focused on resource contraction

Received: 6 October 2021 Revised: 8 August 2023 Accepted: 21 November 2023

DOI: 10.1111/puar.13784

888 © 2024 American Society for Public Administration. Public Admin Rev. 2024;84:888–903.wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/puar

that leads to changes in decision-making, strategic planning,

goal priority setting, and choosing policy tools (Boyne &

Meier, 2009; Cepiku et al., 2016;Raudlaetal.,2017;

Schmidtetal.,2017). Relatedly, our second question

concerns whether resource cutbacks prompt the diver-

sion of implementation efforts from communities with

greater needs for environmental justice (EJ) to those

with greater needs for regulatory effectiveness.

To answer these questions, we analyze the implemen-

tation of the Clean Air Act (CAA) from 2012 to 2019 with

data at the block group and state levels. The time scope of

the data over 8 years after the recent 2008/2009 recession

allows us to examine the link between resource availability

and goal tradeoffs in a longer time frame, as the impact of

cutbacks is long-term and leaves prints on organizational

missions (Berne & Stiefel, 1993;Pandey,2010).

This study expands our knowledge base in three ways.

First, it offers theoretical and practical implications for gov-

ernment activities under economic distress and revenue

volatility by examining the effects of resource cutbacks

concerning both expenditure and personnel. Changes in

spending and staffing may be closely related, but their

influence and implications are different (Levine, 1979;

Park, 2018;Penrose,1959;Rutherfordandvander

Voet, 2019). During and after the 2008/2009 recession,

most state and local governments experienced various

types and levels of cutbacks, including hiring freezes, lay-

offs, deferring, withdrawing, and canceling of payments

and expenditures (Cepiku et al., 2016;Levine,1979,1984;

Park, 2018). However, the impacts of reduced resources

and services on different social groups have been less

studied (e.g., Sosin et al., 2010; van der Voet, 2019).

Second, we focus on regulatory enforcement activities,

which are not as visible as benefits and assistance to the

public, as policy implementation outputs. While scholars

have studied cutback management in various policy areas,

distributive and redistributive policies have been at the cen-

ter of the research. Few studies have attempted to probe

the impact of cutbacks on the implementation of regulatory

policies. Our understanding of changes in resource availabil-

ity within government agencies, their responses to cutbacks,

and the ensuing effects on policy outputs is still incomplete.

In particular, the lack of exploration of cutbacks in regula-

tory policy areas is an unfortunate neglect, given the far-

reaching and enduring implications in this policy domain

for social groups lacking political power and knowledge to

mobilize and advocate for themselves.

Third, this study offers a path toward understanding

goal conflicts and tradeoffs by examining whether

resource changes, demand for social justice, and demand

for regulatory effectiveness have independent and interac-

tive effects on state agencies’policy outputs. As detailed in

the following sections, goal dynamics and potential trade-

offs hold substantiveimportance in discerning government

agencies’policy implementation process. P rior studies

have primarily concerned organizational effectiveness,

such as efficiency gains, innovation, reducing waste, or

“doing more with less”inachieving the organizational mis-

sion (Esteve et al., 2017: 544; Pollitt, 2010), but rarely

addressed social equity concerns (van der Voet, 2019).

In the next section, we lay out the theoretical back-

grounds linking resource changes to organizational per-

formance and goal dynamics between organizational

effectiveness and social equity, followed by an introduc-

tion to our empirical setting. We then propose hypothe-

ses, describe the data and methods, and present the

results. Finally, we discuss the implications for under-

standing the relationship between resource cutbacks and

goal prioritization and conclude with the remaining ques-

tions for future research.

THEORETICAL BACKGROUNDS

Resource changes and organizational

performance

Resources available to public organizations may expand

or shrink due to intra-organizational factors and/or exter-

nal environments, such as elections, recessions, administra-

tive reforms, and other events that modify policy priorities.

Changes in resource availability and demands lead to the

adjustment of resource allocation or management strate-

gies, which has significant implications for organizational

performance. Public management scholars agree on the

importance of resources as a determinant of public service

performance (Boyn e, 2003); however, our knowledge is

limited as to the relative impacts of different types of

resources either in affluent or prudent times (Boyne, 2003;

Lee & Whitford, 2012). Given the particularly profound

impact of resource contraction (compared to expansion),

our inquiry is centered on the effect of resource cutbacks

in the form of personnel and/or budget cuts.

The relationship between resource changes and orga-

nizational performance is not straightforward. Research

indicates that the impacts of resource cutbacks can be

positive or negative (Kelman, 2006; Pollitt, 2010) or mod-

erative (Boyne & Meier, 2009; Flink and Molina 2020;

Meier et al., 2007), depending on contexts, processes, and

leadership styles (Kuipers et al., 2014; Schmidt et al., 2017;

van der Voet & Vermeeren, 2017). A nonlinear relationship

is also observed where cutbacks’initial benefits are sub-

ject to diminishing returns until the threshold point where

cutbacks begin to take a toll (Park, 2018). In addition,

resource expansion is not always associated with perfor-

mance improvement but often results in productivity loss

due to crowding and wasted resources (Boyne, 2003;Lee

et al., 2007;Lee&Whitford,2012; Mishina et al., 2004;

Penrose, 1959). Public service performance may or may

not improve with higher spending as “the flow of extra

resources evaporated in the bureaucracy.”(Boyne,

2003: 369). Research on private organizations suggests

that resource slack may lead to lower performance by

encouraging suboptimal behavior (Simon, 1947[1997];

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