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- Creators: Arizona State University
- Member of: Theses and Dissertations
- Status: Published
choices are affected by age, health, and financial constraints, and by exposure to local amenities that affect people’s health and longevity. Chapter 1 previews how I formalize this idea and investigate its empirical implications in three interrelated essays. Chapter 2 investigates interactions between health, the environment, and income. Seniors tend to move at higher rates after being diagnosed with new chronic medical conditions. While seniors generally tend to move to locations with less polluted air, those who have been diagnosed with respiratory conditions move to relatively more polluted locations. This counterintuitive pattern is reconciled by documenting that new diagnoses bring about increases in medical expenditures, thereby limiting disposable income that can be spent on housing. Relatively cheaper places tend to be more polluted, and higher exposure to pollution leaves seniors more vulnerable to future health shocks. In Chapter 3, I combine information about housing prices with estimates of location-specific effects on mortality to estimate the Value of a Statistical Life (VSL) for seniors - one of the most important statistics used to evaluate policies affecting mortality. Since local amenities correlate with causal mortality effects, but also provide utility independently, the difficulty in controlling for local amenities implies that my VSL estimates are best interpreted as bounds. Chapter 4 builds a new structural framework for evaluating spatially heterogeneous changes to local amenities. I estimate a dynamic model of location choice with a sample of 5.5 million seniors from 2001-2013. Their average annual willingness-to-pay to avoid future climate change in the United States under a “business as usual” scenario ranges from $962 for older, sicker groups who are more vulnerable to climate change’s negative effects on health to -$1,894 for younger, healthier groups, who value warmer winters and are relatively resilient.
Environmental hazards and disaster researchers have demonstrated strong associations between sociodemographic indicators, such as age and socio-economic status (SES), and hazard exposures and health outcomes for individuals and in certain communities. At the same time, behavioral health and risk communications research has examined how individual psychology influences adaptive strategies and behaviors in the face of hazards. However, at present, we do not understand the explanatory mechanisms that explain relationships between larger scale social structure, individual psychology, and specific behaviors that may attenuate or amplify risk. Extreme heat presents growing risks in a rapidly warming and urbanizing world. This dissertation examines the social and behavioral mechanisms that may explain inequitable health outcomes from exposure to concurrent extreme heat and electrical power failure in Phoenix, AZ and extreme heat in Detroit, MI. Exploratory analysis of 163 surveys in Phoenix, AZ showed that age, gender, and respondent’s racialized group identity did not relate to thermal discomfort and self-reported heat illness, which were only predicted by SES (StdB = -0.52, p < 0.01). Of the explanatory mechanisms tested in the study, only relative air conditioning intensity and thermal discomfort explained self-reported heat illness. Thermal discomfort was tested as both a mechanism and outcome measure. Content analysis of 40 semi-structured interviews in Phoenix, AZ revealed that social vulnerability was associated with an increase in perceived hazard severity (StdB = 0.44, p < 0.01), a decrease in perceived adaptation efficacy (StdB = -0.38, p = 0.02), and an indirect increase (through adaptive efficacy) in maladaptive intentions (StdB = 0.18, p = 0.01). Structural equation modeling of 244 surveys in Phoenix, AZ and Detroit, MI revealed that relationships between previous heat illness experience, perceived heat risk, and adaptive intentions were significantly moderated by adaptive capacity: high adaptive capacity households were more likely to undertake adaptive behaviors, and those decisions were more heavily influenced by risk perceptions and previous experiences. However, high adaptive capacity households had lower risk perceptions and fewer heat illness experiences than low adaptive capacity households. A better understanding of the mechanisms that produce social vulnerability can facilitate more salient risk messaging and more targeted public health interventions. For example, public health risk messaging that provides information on the efficacy of specific adaptations may be more likely to motivate self-protective action, and ultimately protect populations.