USING DATA ENVELOPMENT ANALYSIS (DEA) TO EVALUATE ENVIRONMENTAL QUALITY AND JUSTICE: A DIFFERENT WAY OF LOOKING AT THE SAME OLD NUMBERS

Abstract

The study introduces a new method for assessing differences in levels of environmental quality between neighborhoods via application of the management science evaluation procedure data envelopment analysis (DEA). DEA that has the capacity to evaluate activities and process situations where more than one outcome is simultaneously involved is employed here to estimate the relative differences in environmental quality which majority versus minority populations may face between communities within a community. A relative assessment procedure, DEA illustrates in the study how to assess whether minority populations relative to majority populations within the same larger community face different levels of environmental quality that cannot be explained by differences in education, income, or other non-race based characteristics.

The article points out the danger of simply inspecting one environmental quality factor at a time. Such a single factor evaluation can as the study illustrates generate misleading conclusions of environmental quality conditions. The study shows that the DEA approach while not solving all the problems of multiple source environmental factor influences, provides a useful method for looking at some dimensions of this problem.

Acknowledgments