The Center for Climate, Coastal and Marine Studies Monthly Seminar

The Center for Climate, Coastal and Marine Studies will hear from Dr. Tristan Potter, Professor of Economics, Lebow College of Business at Drexel University, to discuss The Magnitude and Durability of the Effect of Air Pollution on Support for Environmental Policy.

“How do elevated levels of air pollution affect individuals’ support for environmental policy? To study this question, I merge daily air quality readings from thousands of monitoring stations nationwide with restricted-use data on individuals’ county of residence and views on environmental policy from the General Social Survey. The merged data allow me to identify the magnitude and persistence of the effects of air pollution on support for environmental policy. I find that prolonged exposure to elevated levels of PM10 (particulate pollution) and SO2 (sulfur gas) are positively associated with a view that the government should be spending more on improving and protecting the environment. However, these effects disappear almost immediately—within one month of exposure to elevated pollutant concentrations—suggesting that environmental crises have only a short-lived effect on support for environmental policy.”

Dr. Potter’s research is primarily focused on macroeconomics and labor. Specifically, about job search and unemployment, the role of expectations and beliefs in driving aggregate fluctuations, and the effects of policies such as non-compete bans on economic outcomes. Much of this work emphasizes the role of information in accounting for observed phenomena in the labor market and how technology shapes labor market outcomes at the individual and aggregate levels.

He also has a long-standing interest in environmental conservation, with several on-going projects in this area, including an archival project that seeks to understand the long-term effects of the CCC on enrollees' engagement with environmentalism, a project on how air pollution affects support for environmental policy, and a project on the relationship between agricultural technology and deforestation.