COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH: Feeling the Squeeze: How Financial Stress Shapes Decision Making and Risk for Drinking Water Systems in U.S. Cities

合作研究：感受到压力：财务压力如何影响美国城市饮用水系统的决策和风险

• 批准号: 2049834
• 负责人: Christine Kirchhoff
• 金额: $ 20.22万
• 依托单位: University of Connecticut
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2021
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2021-03-01 至 2024-01-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2049834&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: COLLABORATIVE; RESEARCH; Feeling; Squeeze; How

Across the nation, cities face immense fiscal stress brought about by the confluence of increased demands for critical city services – including drinking water, education, transportation, fire protection, and housing – and precipitous declines in revenues needed to support those increased demands. Decisions made under conditions of fiscal stress may erode and undermine the resilience of these critical city services by impeding the ability of water managers to respond to today’s challenges and plan for an uncertain future, while maintaining affordable and equitable service delivery. Financial stress therefore presents a significant risk to the resilience of the services upon which millions of people depend. Despite these risks, the effects of financial stress on decision-making by city governments and the influence of local political, institutional, and physical contexts on decision-making is poorly understood. This award supports fundamental research that will address this fundamental gap in knowledge. Specifically, this research will advance understanding of the ways that financial stress affects decision-making and resilience of drinking water systems (DWS), produce actionable knowledge that will improve equity and resilience of DWS, generate a new, publicly accessible database, and educate and train students and water professionals about the intersection of fiscal stress, risk and resilience, and equity in municipal decision making. This research advances empirical and theoretical understanding of the relationship between financial stress, fiscal behavior, and resilience using a novel mixed methods approach. This research also advances practical understanding of how financial stress affects decision making and resilience in municipal DWS and generates a novel, integrative, publicly accessible database of municipal government spending and revenue, political and institutional context, drinking water system conditions, and demographics. Results from this research will provide scholars with new theoretical insights for understanding the relationship between fiscal stress, behavior, and resilience and its implications for equity in public services, and provide actionable insights to support effective interventions to improve equitable resilience now and in the future. This research will train a postdoc and graduate and undergraduate students including those from underrepresented groups including women, students of color, and first-generation students in rigorous, interdisciplinary research and engagement and reach over 100 more students through instruction using case studies developed from this research. Broad dissemination will occur through publications, conferences, webinars, and case studies.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

在全国范围内，城市面临着巨大的财政压力，这是由于对饮用水、教育、交通、消防和住房等关键城市服务的需求增加，以及支持这些增加的需求所需的收入急剧下降而带来的。在财政压力的情况下，水管理者应对当今挑战和规划不确定的未来的能力可能会削弱和破坏这些关键城市服务的弹性，同时保持负担得起和公平的服务提供因此存在重大风险。的弹性尽管存在这些风险，但人们对财政压力对市政府决策的影响以及当地政治、制度和自然环境对决策的影响知之甚少。具体来说，这项研究将增进对财务压力影响饮用水系统 (DWS) 决策和复原力的方式的理解，这些知识将提高 DWS 的公平性和复原力，产生新的、可公开访问的数据库，并对学生和水利专业人员进行教育和培训这项研究使用一种新颖的混合方法，推进了对财政压力、财政行为和弹性之间关系的实证和理论理解。财务压力如何影响市政 DWS 的决策和弹性，并生成一个新颖的、综合的、可公开访问的市政府支出和收入、政治和制度背景、饮用水系统条件和人口统计数据库。这项研究的结果将为学者们提供新的信息。理解财政压力、行为、这项研究将培训博士后、研究生和本科生，包括来自女性、学生等代表性不足群体的学生。该奖项将通过出版物、会议、网络研讨会和案例研究进行广泛传播。该奖项反映了 NSF 的法定奖项。使命和通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，该项目被认为值得支持。