Close
About
FAQ
Home
Collections
Login
USC Login
Register
0
Selected
Invert selection
Deselect all
Deselect all
Click here to refresh results
Click here to refresh results
USC
/
Digital Library
/
University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses
/
The Political And Social Impact Of Aircraft Noise On Four Urban Communities
(USC Thesis Other)
The Political And Social Impact Of Aircraft Noise On Four Urban Communities
PDF
Download
Share
Open document
Flip pages
Contact Us
Contact Us
Copy asset link
Request this asset
Transcript (if available)
Content
INFORMATION TO USERS This dissertation was produced from a microfilm copy of the original document. While the most advanced technological means to photograph and reproduce this document have been used, the quality is heavily dependent upon the quality of the original submitted. The following explanation of techniques is provided to help you understand markings or patterns which may appear on this reproduction. 1. The sign or "target" for pages apparently lacking from the document photographed is "Missing Page{s)'\ If it was possible to obtain the missing page(s) or section, they are spliced into the film along with adjacent pages. This may have necessitated cutting thru an image and duplicating adjacent pages to insure you complete continuity. 2. When an image on the film is obliterated with a large round black mark, it is an indication that the photographer suspected that the copy may have moved during exposure and thus cause a blurred image. You will find a good image of the page in the adjacent frame. 3. When a map, drawing or chart, etc., was part of the material being ‘ p h o tographed the photographer followed a definite method in "sectioning" the material. It is customary to begin photoing at the upper left hand corner of a large sheet and to continue photoing from left to right in equal sections with a small overlap. If necessary, sectioning is continued again — beginning below the first row and continuing on until complete. 4. The majority of users indicate that the textual content is of greatest value, however, a somewhat higher quality reproduction could be made from "photographs" if essential to the understanding of the dissertation. Silver prints of "photographs" may be ordered at additional charge by writing the Order Department, giving the catalog number, title, author and specific pages you wish reproduced. University Microfilms 300 N orth Z e e b R oad Ann A rbor, M ichigan 48106 A X erox E d u catio n C om pany 74-26,019 CLARY, Bruce Bennett, 1946- THE POLITICAL AND SOCIAL IMPACT OF AIRCRAFT NOISE ON FOUR URBAN COMMUNITIES. University of Southern California, Ph.D., 1974 Political Science, general University Microfilms, A X ER O X Com pany, Ann Arbor, Michigan © Copyright by Bruce Bennett Clary 197h THIS DISSERTATION HAS BEEN MICROFILMED EXACTLY AS RECEIVED. THE POLITICAL AND SOCIAL IMPACT OF AIRCRAFT NOISE ON FOUR URBAN COMMUNITIES by Bruce Bennett Clary A Dissertation Presented to the FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Political Science June 1974 UNIVERSITY OF SOU TH ERN CALIFORNIA THE GRADUATE SCHOOL UNIVERSITY PARK LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA S 0 0 0 7 This dissertation, 'written by under the direction of hxs.... Dissertation C om mittee, and approved by all its members, has been presented to and accepted by The Graduate School, in partial fulfillment of requirements of the degree of D O C T O R O F P H I L O S O P H Y BRUCE BENNETT CLARY Tv Dean DISSERTATION COMMITTEE ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to acknowledge the many people who contributed directly or indirectly to the writing of this dissertation. Without their assistance, it would have been a far less rewarding experience both personally and academically. Foremost, much gratitude is due Dr. Robert Warren and Dr. Robert Goodman. They provided many insights and opportunities without which this dissertation could not have been written. As a person I am richer for my association with them. A thanks is owed Dr. Thomas Greene and Dr. Edward Conolley. In their classes, I was exposed for the first time to many ideas which appear in the dissertation. Other individuals have to be mentioned. My wife, Kathleen, who suffered through many lost weekends during our first year of marriage as the dissertation was being written. Ed Rancourt and Bob Blackstone, great fellows to bounce ideas off of. David Wentworth, a good person to know if you want to talk about broad range theories. Alois Chalmers who is a great typist and editor. I would also like to extend thanks to a number of institutions. Los Angeles International Airport provided interviews and documents that proved invaluable. The Center for Urban Affairs, University of Southern California contributed the financial resources necessary to do the work. TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ................................ ii LIST OF TABLES................................... v LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.............................vii Chapter I. INTRODUCTION .............................. 1 II. REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE.................. 14 III. AIRCRAFT NOISE AS AN ISSUE OF PUBLIC POLICY..................................... 38 IV. INDIVIDUAL-LEVEL POLITICAL RESPONSES TO AIRCRAFT N O I S E........................ 64 V. PUBLIC RESPONSES TO AIRCRAFT NOISE ABATEMENT POLICIES ........................ 113 VI. SOME STATISTICAL MODELS OF THE IMPACT OF AIRCRAFT NOISE ON COMMUNITY SOCIO ECONOMIC STRUCTURE...........................167 VII. CONCLUSION...................................217 APPENDIXES......................................... 243 BIBLIOGRAPHY ..................................... 250 iv LIST OF TABLES 4:1. Political Activity by Subjective Annoyance ... 83 4:2. Political Activity by Objective Exposure .... 85 4:3. Correlation Matrix (tau c) between Objective and Subjective Indicators of Aircraft Noise ................................ 89 4:4. Political Activity by Type of Residence .... 91 4:5. Political Activity by Length of Residence ... 92 4:6. Political Activity by Airport's Sense of Political Responsibility ...................... 97 4:7. Political Activity by Socio-Economic Status.......................................... 100 4:8. Multiple Regression Equation for Political Activity ............................ 103 5:1. Attitude Toward the Proposed Change in Landing Procedures by Community of Residence . ........ 129 5:2. Attitude Toward the Proposed Change in Landing Procedures by Political Activity .............. 132 5:3. Attitude Toward the Proposed Change in Landing Procedures by Subjective Annoyance with Aircraft Noise ................................ 134 5:4. Attitude Change Due to Announcement of Procedure Change by Attitude Toward the Proposed Change in Landing Procedures ........................ 137 5:5. Satisfaction with Airport Offer for Home by Membership in Homeowner Group ................ 152 5:6. Airport Management Understands the Problems It Creates for the Homeowner by Membership in a Homeowner Group ............................ 154 5:7. Multiple Regression Equation for Membership in Homeowner Group .............................. 160 v 6:1. Holleb Empirical Typology of Metropolitan Demographic Factors and Selected Variables Included in the Present Analysis .......... 176 6:2. Pearson Correlations Between 1970 Census Variables and Noise Exposure Forecast Levels ..................................... 177-78 6:3. Factor Matrices ........................... 181-82 6:4. Pearson Correlations Between Factor Scales and Noise Exposure Forecast Levels (NEF) . . 186 6:5. Factor Score Plot for Census Tracts on FSCALE1 and FSCALE3...................... 188 6:6. FSCALE1 (Community Transition) by FSCALE3 (Neighborhood Stability) .................. 190 6:7. Pearson Correlations Between 1960 and 1970 Values for Community Transition Variables................................ 194 6:8. Pearson Correlations Between Noise Expo sure Forecast Levels (NEF) and Community Transition................................ 196 6:9. Independent Variables Included in Ridker Study of Relationship Between Air Pollution, Housing and Neighborhood Characteristics and Property Values...................... 202 6:10. Pearson Correlations Between Variables Included in Multiple Regression Model of the Relationship Between Property Values and Aircraft Noise........................ 206 6:11. Partial Correlations Between Median Property Values and Persons Per Household, Percent Homes Built Since 1960, Percent Black Con trolling for Median Number of Rooms .... 208 6:12. Multiple Regression of Median Property Values on Aircraft Noise, Housing and Neighborhood Characteristics .............. 210 vi LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Figure 4:1. Los Angeles International Airport Approach Paths and Sample Communities................ 73 6:1. 1970 Noise Exposure Forecast Contour on 1970 Census Tracts for Westchester, Inglewood, El Segundo and Lennox ............ 172 7:1. Demand, Output and Outcome Dimensions of the Aircraft Noise Policy System at Los Angeles International Airport .......... 228-29 vii CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION In recent years, public concern with the environ ment has increased markedly. For example, in a Gallup national survey conducted in 1965 on domestic policy priorities, only 17 percent chose air and water pollution from a list of ten issue areas as one of three problems that the national government should devote more attention to in the next two years. In contrast, in a 1970 Gallup Survey with the same question included, 53 percent of the sample placed air and water pollution in the list of the top three issues. Over the five-year period, air and water pollution showed the greatest amount of positive change among the ten issues and in 197 0 was listed ahead of such policy areas as poverty, unemployment, health and racial discrimination. Only reducing crime received more listings in the 197 0 survey than air and water pollution (56 to 53 percent).^ While public consciousness about the environment has been increasing, there has been only scattered research to date on public reactions to specific dimensions of the environment, particularly in relation to the problem of 1 2 environmental pollution. The lack of data in this area has become evident as more and more governmental legislation dealing with environmental pollution has been passed. Both in the formulation and implementation stages of legislative policy, decision-makers have been faced with limited infor mation regarding, for example, how people feel about a specific environmental problem, how much they might be willing to sacrifice to solve the problem and what public reactions might be expected from various policy alterna tives. As Raymond Bauer has put it, the problem has been a lack of sufficient information to anticipate what the probable impact of a policy will be. Aircraft Noise as a Substantive Area of Inquiry in Environmental Pollution This analysis focuses on one type of environmental pollution, jet aircraft noise, from the perspective of public reaction to it. Aircraft noise as an environmental pollution policy area has a number of characteristics, unlike air pollution, for example, which makes it particu larly amenable to a behavioral study of the problem. First, it has a relatively restricted geographical impact compared to many environmental pollutions. Air pollution in Los Angeles, the metropolitan area where the study is conducted, affects the entire Los Angeles Basin which covers several thousand square miles. Jet aircraft noise, by comparison, is generally only a major problem in communities adjacent to or in the immediate vicinity of airports and then only severely impacts areas one-half to one mile from a flight path or runway. In terms of the geographic area studied, aircraft noise is a more manageable phenomenon than most environmental pollutions. Air pollution is not only a more geographically diffuse problem than aircraft noise, but its level of impact is generally less severe. While during an air pollution alert, persons with respiratory ailments may suffer discomfort and children in schools may not be allowed to engage in outdoor recreation, the impact is still largely restricted to specific conditions or be haviors and times. In contrast, aircraft noise can affect such basic living habits as conversation, sleeping and outdoor activities on a twenty-four hour basis. Some researchers argue that prolonged exposure to aircraft noise may produce severe behavioral disorders and the relationship between high jet noise level exposure and , 3 hearing loss is well-documented. Because of the greater impact of aircraft noise on persons in exposed communities in comparison to most en vironmental pollutions, it tends to be much more of a salient issue. Citizen political responses to aircraft noise have also been much more vigorous. Due to the greater salience of the problems and correspondingly more intense public responses to it, aircraft noise as an area of inquiry is a more descriptive source of data on commu nity reactions. Aircraft noise as a pollution problem is also more manageable in terms of the potential for abatement. Air pollution is a complex chemical and physical phenomenon which is produced by the activities of many different agents. Transportation vehicles, industrial enterprises and power plants all contribute to air pollution and the pollutants they emit are different. Air pollution control, therefore, requires the regulation of different sources and types of pollution and is also complicated by the fact that both movable and stationary sources are involved. Water pollution presents similar abatement problems. There is the advantage with water that it can be centrally collected and treated, but over the course of a stream or river there may be many different polluters 5 dumping distinct types of wastes into the water. A stream or river may also cross many separate political juris dictions which raises the question of legal responsibility for applying sanctions on polluters. Since many munici palities are major polluters through their waste disposal activities, the problem is further compounded. As a public policy problem, aircraft noise is much less complex. Reduction of the noise at the source, the engine, is expensive, but is not nearly as costly as the abatement controls necessary to reduce air or water pollution at the source. Additionally, since aircraft noise is a geographically restricted pollution, locational strategies offer another means of abatement. Airports can be relocated or flight paths rerouted to avoid residential areas. This latter alternative has resulted in a number of aircraft noise abatement policies being implemented at various airports around the United States. These policies, based on operational changes, have produced substantially lower noise levels in many exposed communities. These abatement programs provide an opportunity to assess public reactions to pollution abatement policies that actually improve environmental conditions, a tangible 6 rather than the more usual symbolic output, and to estimate the probable outcomes that might result from these policies. There are three reasons, then, why jet aircraft noise is a good subject area in which to focus on public reactions to environmental pollution. Its relatively restricted geographical impact makes it possible to do an intensive analysis of public responses whereas this would be a much more difficult undertaking in regard to air or water pollution, for example, which are more geographically diffuse phenomenon. Secondly, aircraft noise tends to have a much greater impact on exposed areas than other pollu tions so that public reactions are more marked and presumably, measurable. Lastly, as a public policy problem aircraft noise has a much greater potential for control in the immediate future. This allows the analysis of public responses to abatement policies which have a measurable effect on community pollution levels. Theoretical Framework of Analysis The framework of analysis is based on a policy system model developed by Austin Ranney which is an adaptation of Easton's political system model.^ There are two basic components of Ranney's model: the policy process and policy content. The policy process includes inputs, feedbacks and the conversion process. The policy content refers to outputs and outcomes. Inputs to a political system or more specifically, a decision system are of two types: demands and supports. Demands involve claims on the system for various types of outputs or values as Easton describes them. For the system to process these demands, various kinds of supports, which range from perception of regime legitimacy to revenues through taxation, are required. Demands and supports along with the actual functions of the system (conversion process) and possible feedbacks into the system are referred to as the "policy process" by Ranney. The other major dimension of Ranney*s model is the "policy content.'* This includes the actual output or the authoritative decision that the system produces in response to demands and the outcomes that result from this policy. Outcomes can be of two types although Ranney does not specifically describe them. One possible outcome is the outcome actually anticipated by the decision-maker. Alternatively, the policy may have an impact which was not anticipated when the policy was implemented or using economic terminology, the output may have positive or negative externalities associated with it. Depending upon the outcomes associated with an output, various feedback links may develop which result in new demands being placed on the system for a continuation, discon tinuation or change in the original policy. The function of this model in the analysis is conceptual and theoretical rather than operational. It provides a framework to relate the various parts of the analysis to each other. But the links between the various components, e.g., inputs, outputs and outcomes, are assumed to exist and are not based on demonstrable evidence. This limitation with systems models has been noted by numerous scholars. Homans considers systems to be orienting rather than operational statements because they provide the researcher with ideas about how to conceptu alize phenomenon, but do not indicate anything about the phenomenon itself.^ Similarly, Merton says a systems model provides an "approach," but not an "arrival. Frohock argues that a "system is nothing more than a model to order phenomena (not a real property of the social uni verse) "and to be operative, the criteria for including phenomena in a system must be specifically defined."^ Systems analysts rather than developing operational hypotheses in order that their models can be empirically verified, rely on an analogy to natural and physical sys- Q tems for empirical justification. In the present analysis, Ranney's policy process model will be employed, to use Homan's terminology, in an orienting rather than operational sense. As described above, the purpose is to relate the various dimensions of the analysis to each other rather than asserting that the data provides empirical support for the existence of a system. The Aircraft Noise Policy System at Los Angeles International Airport Since 1959, the year regular jet aircraft passenger was initiated, aircraft noise has been a major problem for residents in communities adjacent to Los Angeles Inter national Airport (LAX). The initial public response to aircraft noise was vigorous and a political conflict ensued between local citizens and the air transport policy system which has existed up to the present day. In recent years, however, the conflict has lessened as LAX has implemented a number of noise abatement policies and Congress has passed comprehensive legislation dealing with noise pollution. While there is now evidence that public agencies concerned with air transportation are expanding their 10 decision agenda to take into account the negative exter nality of aircraft noise, this follows approximately a decade of "nondecisions" regarding aircraft noise abate ment. During this period, the task faced by people living in communities exposed to aircraft noise was to make the public agencies dealing with transportation politically accountable for the noise. They hoped this would result in either a reduction of the noise to toler able levels and/or that the social and economic costs they had to bear because of the noise would be shifted to the producers themselves. The subsequent analysis focuses on various aspects of the policy process surrounding the aircraft noise problem at Los Angeles International Airport. Three facets of this process are analyzed in depth through a combination of survey and aggregate analysis. A survey sample of residents in the four communities adjacent to LAX--Westchester, Inglewood, Lennox and El Segundo--was conducted to ascertain dimensions of citizen political activity directed at the aircraft noise problem. In terms of Ranney's policy model, this section is directed toward an understanding of the nature of the demands placed on the air transport policy system for noise abate ment. This data is presented in Chapter IV. 11 Additional data from this survey and data from a survey of homeowners in Westchester forms the basis of analysis in Chapter V. In this section, public reaction to noise abatement policies implemented by LAX is assessed. These policies can be conceptualized as outputs in response to demands placed on the air transport policy system for noise abatement. The citizen responses to these outputs are used as indicates of outcomes of these policies. The data is also examined in terms of the possible feedbacks into the policy system that might result from these outcomes. In Chapter VI, the analysis is based on aggregate census data. While attitude measurement is one way to assess the impact of aircraft noise on a community, another indicator is community socio-economic transition. A number of hypotheses have been formulated which posit a relationship between aircraft noise, declining property values and the movement of lower socio-economic groups into a community. The purpose of this chapter is to test various aspects of these hypotheses. This part of the analysis can also be conceptualized in terms of Ranney's policy model. "Nondecisions" by the air transport policy system about aircraft noise abatement may have resulted in basic changes in the socio-economic structure of 12 impacted communities. In other words, these "nondecisions" are outputs and one of the outcomes is the negative exter nality of community transition. A drawback with the analysis is that the decision system itself, the set of public and private actors con cerned with the provision of air transportation, is not systematically examined. Traditionally, this has been the central focus in policy analysis since the conventional definition of the political process refers to the stage of policy development where demands are translated into outputs. In the present inquiry, the decision system has been essentially "black-boxed." As a partial remedy, air craft noise as a public policy issue is discussed in Chapter III. In the remaining chapters, a review of the literature (Chapter II) and a summary of the data and concluding remarks (Chapter VII) are presented. 13 FOOTNOTES ■^George Gallup, "Which Three of These Problems Would You Like to See the Government Devote Most of Its Attention in the Next Two Years," Gallup Poll Index (June Raymond Bauer, "Detection and Anticipation of Impact: The Nature of the Task," in Social Indicators, ed., Raymond Bauer (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1966), 1-67. 3 Alexander Cohen, "Effects of Noise on Psychologi cal State," Noise as a Public Health Hazard, ed, W. Dixon Ward and James E. Fricke (Washington, D.C.: American Speech and Hearing Association, 1961), 84. ^Austin Ranney, "The Study of Policy Content: A Framework for Choice," in Political Science and Public Policy, ed., Austin Ranney (Chicago: Markham, 1968), 3-22. Also see David Easton, A Systems Analysis of Political Life (New York: Wiley, 1965) . For a general application of the model to the study of urban politics see Robert L. Lineberry and Ira Sharkansky, Urban Politics and Public Policy (New York: Harper and Row7 , 1971, 4-18. ' ’George Homans, The Nature of Social Science (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1967), 14-18. ^Robert Merton, Social Theory and Social Structure (New York: Free Press, 1957), 9^ ^Fred Frohock, The Nature of Scientific Inquiry (Homewood, 111.: Dorsey Press, 1967), 84-85. ^James' A. Gregor, "Political Science and the Uses of Functional Analysis," American Political Science Review 61 (June 1968): 427-431. CHAPTER II REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE Aircraft noise as a public policy issue can be examined from two perspectives. It can be looked at from an institutional viewpoint with emphasis on policy formu lation. Alternatively, we can ask what are the impacts that a given policy has. These approaches represent fundamentally different orientations to the study of public policy. Institutional analysis focuses on public policy as a decision-making process whereas impact studies are concerned with the content of policies. Austin Ranney defines policy contents as: ...the particular object or set of objects the policy is intended to affect, the particular course of events desired, the particular line of action chosen, the particular declaration made and the particular action taken.... This has been a neglected area of analysis in political science. Behavioralists emphasize pure research and generally focus on the individual as the unit of analysis, both which militate against their involvement in policy research. Advocates of the traditional insti tutional approach, while concerned with public policy, see 14 15 the role of the political scientist as primarily descrip tive, focusing upon the mechanics of the political process. In recent years there has been a resurgence of interest in public policy, particularly on policy outputs or as Harold Lasswell succinctly put it, "who gets what, when, h o w . Ranney distinguishes this, which he calls a "policy outcome," from the more commonly analyzed "policy output," the legislative decision itself: A policy outcome includes the way or ways in which the course of events is in fact affected by the authorities' actions in implementing the policy they have chosen.^ Public policy areas that have been studied using this approach include higher education, agriculture, con scription and defense spending.^ Russett, for example, in testing a hypothesis that "defense spending has to come at the expense of something else," found that the expenditures for defense accounted for 84 percent of the variance in personal consumption and that "social investments" in health, education and welfare are all sensitive to changes in defense spending.^ In these studies, the policy itself is concep tualized as an independent variable. This contrasts to the policy output in Easton's systems model which is a dependent variable, the result of demands placed on the 16 political system.^ A policy can have numerous impacts and in this sense, it functions as an independent variable. The major theoretical example of this orientation to public policy is Theodore Lowi's model of Congressional policy arenas. Each arena has developed its own character istic political structure and method of conflict resolution. Distributive policy, for example, is based on log rolling with virtually no conflict among the various interest groups whereas regulatory policy approxi mates the pluralist model and redistributive policy is characterized by ideological conflict often along class 7 lines. Public Policy and the Environment There have been relatively few policy studies that have focused on the environment and virtually no attention has been paid to the political and social impacts of environmental policies. The most comprehensive is Davies' study of policy formulation in the areas of air and water pollution. According to Davies, the policy process has been character ized by the increasing involvement of the federal government as the limited jurisdictions and lack of re sources of state and local governments have restricted 17 their effectiveness in dealing with pollution prroblems. Factors cited by Davies as roadblocks to a national environmental policy towards air and water pollution include federal inter-agency rivalries, differing interests of Congressional and Executive political actors, lack of co-ordination between the federal, state and local branches of government and the attitude of industrial polluters. Davies does not specifically consider policy outcomes although he does mention the importance of understanding the costs and benefits of pollution control and in parti cular, the necessity of assessing public opinion. The fact that people worry about pollution, Davies argues, is a valid indicator of its cost and public attitudes can be an effective measure of the aesthetic and recreational costs O of pollution. Gordon Stevenson analyzes aircraft noise from a policy perspective, but the focus is also primarily upon g policy formation rather than outcomes. He does not emphasize legislative politics as much as Davies, but concentrates instead on the various roles both private and public actors, such as airline pilots and companies, the courts and the airport operators have played in the policy process. Stevenson concludes that aircraft noise is a complex policy problem, both from a political and 18 technological standpoint and that it is doubtful that local, state or federal action can have a significant impact on reducing aircraft noise in the near future. On policy outputs, Stevenson feels that an effective solution will have to be multifaceted. The two highest priorities are more research on reducing noise at the source, the engine, and emphasizing compatible land- use although the latter along with changes in flight procedures will vary with the location of airports."^ Stevenson does consider policy outcomes and emphasizes the importance of how the public perceives noise abatement efforts: It is clear that many people doubt the size, sufficiency and genuineness of industry and government research efforts. Such doubt despite growing research expenditures, suggest the need for some mechanism to provide an over view and 'legitimation' of the work. Its two key functions would involve assessing the sufficiency of the federal noise abatement program and serving an initial legitimating role. It would help bridge the credibility gap between irate members of the public and hard-working DOT/FAA personnel.H A similar concern with the social impact of noise abatement policies is expressed by Lewis Mayo. He feels that any assessment of noise abatement policies must consider the impact on all aspects of the affected social system, which presumably would include information not 19 only on how people perceive changes in the noise environ ment, but how this, in turn, affects their attitude toward 12 the air transport industry. This type of information may prove crucial in evaluating the effectiveness of policies. For example, a common-sense conclusion would be that a reduction in jet noise would reduce the level of political activity directed at the noise problem. Yet precisely the opposite could conceivably occur. Davies hypothesizes that governmental action creates demands for further action, the public "learns" that something can be done.13 it is important that decision-makers possess this type of information. In this case, for example, the erroneous conclusion might be drawn that the noise abatement was unsuccessful since citizen action had increased. Raymond Bauer has argued that predicting second-order consequences of technical innovation has usually been a speculative process, but accurate data of this type is necessary to understand the nature of the technological process and develop functional 14 feedback mechanisms for decision-making systems. Environmental Perception and Behavior As the preceding discussion indicated, an important aspect of policy outcome research is determining how people 20 affected by a given policy perceive and react to it. How ever, research on attitudes toward environmental policy has been primarily limited to how individuals evaluate general aspects of their physical environment, not on what behavioral consequences may result. The most extensive research on environmental per ception and behavior has been conducted by geographers focusing on how farmers peceive environmental hazards such as droughts or floods and how this affects their adaptation to these problems. Robert Kates, in a study of flood plain farming in La Follettee, Tennessee found that adaptation to flooding depends largely upon a farmer's experience with it. In areas subject to periodic flooding there is a greater tendency for personality factors to produce behavioral differences. An example Kates cites is the greater like lihood of rationalizing behavior in areas where flooding occurs infrequently whereas in locations subject to fre quent flooding, denials are a less tenable form of 1 ^ adaptation. 3 In a similar study conducted by Thomas Saarinen on the reactions of Great Plains wheat farmers to drought, adaptation depends upon the degree of aridity, amount of drought experience and personality differences. Saarinen 21 does consider the policy implications of his research. Basing his conclusions on the importance of a farmer's per ception of the hazard, he states that the fatalism of many of the farmers about drought results in them being resis tant to adopting technical innovations. Because of this, Saarinen argues, public officials might achieve greater success in drought management at a lower cost if they concentrated their efforts on the innovative farmer and when the practices became established, their diffusion to the more recalcitrant farmers. Most of the attitudinal research, however, has not considered policy ramifications. The major concern is with how various facets of the environment are evaluated. The most consistent finding is the intervening effect of socio economic and social psychological factors have on the relationship between perception of environmental problems and concern about it. In a survey of attitudes toward water pollution in Syracuse, New York, there are statistically significant relationships between education and income with willingness to be taxed to reduce the level of pollution. The higher a person's income and education, the more likely he is to support taxation. People under forty also express a greater willingness to be taxed. On the basis of the data, 22 the authors conclude that water pollution is a middle-class 1 7 issue. While not directly addressed to public policy, the study does suggest that a community may experience political conflict over water treatment which may involve different segments of the community in opposition and not just industry versus the concerned citizen which is the usual form the conflict takes. In an attitudinal study conducted in Durham, North Carolina, the inclination of an individual to feel environ mental pollution is a problem depends upon his perception of his geographic proximity to the problem. Thirty-one percent feel it is a moderate to serious problem in their neighborhood compared to 68 percent for Durham and North Carolina and 83 percent for the nation as a whole. The hypothesis is that the more attached a person is, both psychologically and sociologically, to his community, the 1 8 less likely he is to acknowledge the problem. ° Some research has focused on motivation behind environmentally-related political behavior. In a study of sewage disposal in British Columbia, many of the residents in the area had strong opinions about the dangers of water pollution, but few had actually tried to do anything about it and 30 percent felt there was nothing an individual 19 could do politically toward solving such problems. A 23 reason often given was the technical nature of pollution issues which prevents the layman from fully understanding the problem. There is the possibility that in policy areas more accessible to the average citizen in terms of his knowledge and experience, this type of pessimism might not be as evident. Political activity tends to be most strongly relat ed to the socio-economic characteristics of an individual and this seems to apply to the area of environmental 20 politics also. This relationship has been observed in 21 regard to both local and national politics. Alford and Scoble in a comprehensive survey of the adult electorate in four Wisconsin cities construct an index of local political involvement based on local political interest, information, public-meeting attendance and electoral turnout. Social status and a closely related factor, organizational activity, are the best predictors of poli tical activism. As with most studies of political participation, the number of highly active individuals is 2 2 relatively low, 28 percent. In a national sample taken by Almond and Verba, the same percentage of respondents said they had tried to influence their local government by 23 engaging in some form of political activity. 24 Individual Attitudes, Political Action and Aircraft Noise Research on perception of aircraft noise as an environmental problem and political reactions to it has paralleled the work that has been conducted in other environmental areas. McKennell and NASA, find that complaints about aircraft noise and political activity directed at the problem are strongly related to the socio economic background of an individual and therefore, aircraft noise like water pollution is a middle-class issue.^ McKennell states: Complaints, in short, come from that section of the politically active, articulate middle class who are sensitive to noise. There was no evi dence that they were any more neurotic than the equally annoyed non-complainants, but they did tend~ to be even more convinced that the noise could be prevented and that it was affecting their health.25 The intervening effects of social psychological variables between perception of the noise and political behavior directed at the problem has also been examined. People tend to be more tolerant of the noise if they feel that something is being done to solve the problem. If the source of the noise is considered to make an important contribution to the community, people are less inclined to react to it.^6 Fear is also a factor. Paul Borsky argues 25 that this sets aircraft noise apart from the impact of other pollutions: This is probably the one most important variable which separates reactions to air craft noise from other noise reactions. Where there is fear of possible air craches, there is usually more annoyance and less likelihood that adaptation will occur over time.27 In communities affected by aircraft noise, it is usually ranked as the worse community problem. In a noise survey taken in Philadelphia, 55 percent of the residents adjacent to an airport ranked aircraft noise as the most negative residential characteristic in their neighborhood compared to 1.25 percent in the other areas included in the study. There have been five major attitudinal surveys about the impact of jet noise on residential communities.^ Their findings are generally comparable, but their sampling areas vary considerably. Aircraft noise, unlike air or water pollution, is a very localized problem. Generally only communities under the final approach paths, adjacent to runways or under the departure patterns are seriously affected by aircraft noise. The sampling areas, however, have varied from a triangulated area with its vertex at the end of a runway and extending outward ten miles to a one hundred square 26 mile area around an airport which was later refined by drawing concentric rings around an airport with radii extending from one to eight miles.^ The most systematic of the surveys is the NASA comparative analysis of attitudes around seven metro politan airports in the United States. Its primary focus is on the relationship between exposure to jet noise, perception of it and complaint activity. The main finding is that predictors of annoyance tend to be primarily physical and attitudinal whereas predictors of complaints 31 are more likely to be physical and sociological: Seven Best Predictor Variables _________of Annoyance_________ 1. Fear of aircraft crashing in neighborhood 2. Susceptibility to noise 3. Distance from airport 4. Noise adaptability 5. City of residence 6. Belief in misfeasance on the part of those able to do some thing about the noise 7. Extent to which the airport and air transportation are seen as important 27 Seven Best Predictor Variables of Complaints 1. Noise exposure 2. Pollution annoyance 3. Disturbance of weekday hours 4. Discussion of noise 5. Disturbance of weekend hours 6. Mobility 7. Ethnicity A person who complains about aircraft noise also differs from non-complainants in terms of age, education and income with the complainant being older, better educated and more affluent.^ McKennell also finds a strong relationship between SES and complaints. Class, education and property values tend to be the best pre dictors of complaints, but are unrelated to the level of annoyance a person expresses about jet n o i s e .^3 The evidence on the latter point is contradictory, however. In a 1968 survey conducted in communities around Los Angeles International Airport a strong relationship was found between subjective annoyance and income. There is also ambiguity regarding the relative importance of actual exposure to the noise in producing annoyance and/or complaints. McKennell finds noise 28 exposure to be relatively unimportant in predicting annoy ance and whether a person complains or not. Similarly, in the Los Angeles International Airport survey, exposure is only slightly related to annoyance. In contrast, the NASA survey has distance from the airport as the most 35 important independent variable in relation to complaints. There are a number of implications for the study of policy outcomes from this data. Although there is ambiguity on the relative weight of the various independent variables in explaining annoyance and how this, in turn, affects whether a person complains about the noise, it is clear that the relationship is complex, whatever its particular form. People can live in areas severely im pacted by aircraft noise and not be annoyed by it. Conversely, a person can be extremely irritated by it and engage in some form of political activity directed at alleviating the problem although his actual level of exposure may be relatively low. With this variability in individual responses a relevant question is how valid are complaints as an indicator of the impact of jet noise. Paul Borsky argues: 29 To some administrators the only real concern about community reactions to noise is the level of actual complaints. Such a view has been proven very shortsighted and a poor pre dictor for long-range planning. The level of complaints on any local problem, at any point in time, is a result of a complex interaction of many factors ....Unless the administrator is aware of the particular combination of these factors at the time he is evaluating a given level of complaints, he may be sadly misled as to the significance of the complaint activity. A change in the underlying human factors could produce a sharp rise in the number of com plaints without any change in the physical levels of noise.... A related factor is the middle class nature of complaint activity. Some of the data indicates that these individuals reside in relatively low exposure areas. The people who live in the most impacted neighborhoods, there fore, are not registering the complaints. If noise abatement efforts are directed at the sections where there are the most complaints, the most adversely affected persons will be ignored. It may be their silence is not due to some type of adjustment to jet noise, but the lack of socio-economic prerequisites for political action. The significance of the political conflict over jet noise for a community is also a complex issue. McKennell argues that Coleman's hypothesis of the expanding network of community conflict from specific to general issues and the increasing participation of elements of the 30 population not originally involved in the dispute does not hold for aircraft noise controversies. The issue arena has not broadened and middle class groups have predominated from the beginning.3? This may be a misinterpretation of the structure of the conflict, however. The conflicts Coleman considers are based on two opposing sides, pro and con, such as in fluoridation and school desegregation * 7 O disputes. But no one residing in a community impacted by jet noise is an ardent supporter of it, although there may be the feeling it is a necessary evil because of the benefits it provides. Robert Warren and Louis Weschler have pointed out the inapplicability of territorial concepts in under standing urban problems which transcend community 7Q boundaries. As a public policy issue, aircraft noise represents the efforts of communities to gain political access to decision processes, not the process of mediation between conflicting local interests. One of the shortcomings of the present attitudinal research on aircraft noise is the limited attention given to the policy implications of the various findings on individual perception and behavior. For example, the studies are cross-sectional and hence, characteristics of individual responses over time are not considered. 31 A frequent question in surveys dealing with environmental pollution is whether a person is willing to be taxed to reduce the pollution level. But what if a number of programs were implemented and proved to be largely unsuccessful or resulted in a substantial curtailment of an individual's personal activities, such as automobile transportation. Would he then be as willing to pay? A greater effort to understand how people respond to noise abatement programs should also be made. The only major work in this area has been the Douglas Aircraft Company attitudinal studies at Los Angeles International Airport. Using a broad definition of noise abatement which includes quieter engines, homeowner lawsuits, air port relocation and complaints, only 34 percent in 1968 and 49 percent in 1969 were aware that anything was being done.^® The 15 percent increase represents a significant change, but the authors do not speculate on what this might mean. Are people not annoyed by jet noise and consequent ly, have low information levels? Or can we conclude that abatement efforts have not resulted in noticeable reduc tions in the noise and therefore, people are not aware that anything is being done. Another alternative is that in the intervening year, programs were instituted which did have a noticeable effect. 32 This type of information is necessary as recent developments at Los Angeles International Airport suggest. A change in landing procedures was instituted between 11:00 P.M. and 6:00 A.M. which resulted in a reduction of the noise level by as much as 7 0 percent in certain areas adjacent to the airport. But only fourteen indi viduals contacted the airport about the change. The airport management was then faced with the dilemma of evaluating the significance of the new program with A 1 virtually no data on community responses. x If models of how people react to aircraft noise are to be developed it is not sufficient to only under stand how people perceive and react to it, but also how they evaluate policies directed at improving the noise environment. It can be argued that if the noise level is reduced people will react favorably, but the complexity of the relationship between noise exposure, annoyance, attitudes, socio-economic factors and political behavior militates against a simple cause and effect relationship. Public policy does not exist in a vacuum, but within a complex social system. The technical competence to reduce jet noise may only provide a partial solution. As Raymond Bauer has pointed out: 33 As public policy decisions are more rationalized, more of these decisions are made on the basis of technical considerations. I have referred to the fact that the basis of technical con siderations has been increasingly broadened and that it is reasonable to say the press is toward technical decisions which more and more represent the interests of the public on whom they impact. However, it does not follow that the public feels represented. There is clear indication that the public wants to be consulted and to take part in discussions affecting their f a t e .42 We now have some, although not systematic be havioral information on how people perceive and react to environmental pollution. Major governmental activities are now being directed toward improving the quality of the environment. The next step is to understand and evaluate how people respond to specific environmental policies. This is analogous to a social cost approach to evaluating public policy and hopefully, will have the result of broadening the decision agenda on the environ ment. 34 FOOTNOTES ■^Austin Ranney, "The Study of Policy Content: A Framework for Choice," in Political Science and Public Policy, ed., Austin Ranney (Chicago: Markham, 1968), 3-22. 2 Harold Lasswell, Politics: Who Gets What, When, How (Cleveland: World, 1968). 3 Ranney, 8- 9. 4Martin T. Katzman, The Political Economy of Urban Schools (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971) ; Mason Gaffney, "The Benefits of Farm Programs," American Journal of Economics and Sociology 26 (July 1967):237-250; James A. Davies, Jr. and Kenneth M. Dolbeare, Little Groups of Neighbors: The Selective Service System (Chicago: Mark- ham7 1968), 152-158; and Bruce M. Russett, "Who Pays for Defense," American Political Science Review 63 (June 1969): 412-426. ^Russett, 412-426. ^David Easton, A Systems Analysis of Political Life (New York: Wiley, 1965). 7 Theodore J. Lowi, "American Business, Public Policy, Case Studies and Political Theory," World Politics 16 (July 1964):677-715. ®J. Clarence Davies III, The Politics of Pollution (New York: Pegasus, 1970). See also Frederic N. Cleave- land, Congress and Urban Problems (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1969). For a review of political science literature related to the study of air pollution see Ronald 0. Loveridge, "Political Science and Air Pollution: A Review and Assessment of the Literature," in Air Pollution and the Social Sciences, ed., Paul B. Downing (New York: Praeger, 1971) , 45-86. ^Gordon McKay Stevenson, Jr., The Politics of Airport Noise (Belmont, Calif.: Duxbury Press, 197 2). 10Ibid., 138. n Ibid., 134. 35 1 ? Louis H, Mayo, "The Management of Technology Assessment," in Technology Assessment; Understanding the Social Consequences of Technological Applications, ed., Raphael G. Kasper (New York: Praeger, 1970), 86. ■^Davies, 23. ■^Raymond Bauer, "Detection and Anticipation of Impact: The Nature of the Task," in Social Indicators, ed., Raymond Bauer (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1966). -^Robert W. Kates, Hazard and Choice Perception in Flood Plain Management, Dept"! of Geogrephy Research Paper no. 715 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962), 136-137. "^Thomas F. Saarinen, Perception of the Drought Hazard on the Great Plains, Dept. of Geography Research Paper no. 106 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1966), 140-142. -^H. George Frederickson and Howard Magnus, "Comparing Attitudes Toward Water Pollution in Syracuse," Water Resources Research 4 (October 1968):877-889. See also James C. Hite and Eugene A. Laurent, Environmental Planning: An Economic Analysis (New York: Praeger, T972). 18 Arvin Murch, "Public Concern for Environmental Pollution," Public Opinion Quarterly 35 (Spring 1971): 102-108. 19 Thomas O'Riodan, "Public Opinion and Environ mental Quality," Environment and Behavior 3 (June 1971): 191-213. 20 See James A. Swan, "Responses to Air Pollution, A Study of Attitudes and Coping Strategies of High School Youths," Environment and Behavior 2 (September 1970): 127-152. 21-Lester Milbraith, Political Participation (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1965). ^Robert Alford and Harry M. Scoble, "Sources of Local Political Involvement," American Political Science Review 62 (December 1968):1192-1206. 36 ^Gabriel Almond and Sidney Verba, The Civic Culture (Boston: Little, Brown and Company’ i 1965), 144. 2^Aubrey C. McKennell, "Noise Complaints and Community Action" in Transportation Noises, ed., James D. Chalupnik (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1970), 228-244; and National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Community Reaction to Airport Noise, vol. 1, by Tracor, Inc., NASA CR-17 61 (Washington, D. C.: National Technical Information Service, 1971). ^McKennell, 240. 2^Paul n . Borsky, "The Use of Surveys for Measuring Community Responses to Noise Environments," in Transporta tion Noises, ed., James D. Chalupnik (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1970), 220-221. 27Ibid. “ ^Clifford R. Bragdon, Noise Pollution: The Unquiet Crisis (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1970), 154. ^National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Community Reaction to Airport Noise, vol. 1; McKennell; Bragdon; D. M. Zamarin, L. E. Langdon and R. F. Gabriel, A Summary of Two Community Surveys on the Effects of Aircraft^Noise (Long Beach, Calif.: Douglas Aircraft Company [.1971J) ; and National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Community Reaction to Aircraft Noise Around Smaller City Airports, by William K. Conners and Harold P. Patterson, NASA CR-2104 (Washington, C. D.: National Technical Information Service, 1972). ■^National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Community Reaction to Airport Noise, vol. 1, 10-13; and Zamarin et al., 5-7, 59-62. ^National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Community Reaction to Airport Noise, vol. 1, 67-73, 44-66. 32Ibid., 24-28. 33McKennell, 240. ^^Zamarin, et al., 27. 35 McKennel, 226; National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Community Reaction to Airport Noise, vol. 1, 67-73; and Zamarin, et al. , TT 3^Paul N. Borsky, "Effect of Noise on Community Behavior," in Noise as a Public Health Hazard, ed., W. Dixon Ward and James E. Fricke (Washington, D.C.: American Speech and Hearing Association, 1961), 191-192. -r 7 McKennell, 243. For a more extended discussion of the hypothesis see James Coleman, Community Conflict (Glencoe, 111.: Free Press, 1957). •^See Robert L. Crain, The Politics of School Desegregation (Chicago: Aldine^ 1968) ; and Robert L. Cram, Elihu Katz and Donald B. Rosenthal, The Politics of Community Conflict (New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1969). •^Robert Warren and Louis F. Weschler, "Governing Urban Space: Non-Territorial Politics," paper presented at the convention of the American Political Science Association, Washington, D. C., September 1972. 4°Zamarin, et al., 34 and 91. 41 See Borsky, "Effects of Noise," 192. 42Raymond Bauer, "Predicting the Future," in Transportation Noises, ed., James D. Chalupnik (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1970), 249. CHAPTER III JET AIRCRAFT NOISE AS AN ISSUE OF PUBLIC POLICY Jet aircraft noise has been a controversial issue in communities adjacent to major metropolitan airports since the introduction of regular jet passenger service in 1959.* The noise generated by a jet aircraft engine is extremely loud and both physiological and psychological 7 problems can result from prolonged exposure to it. Areas which are in close proximity to runways or approach paths can experience decibel levels as high as 110 dBA which is in marked contrast to the average street noise of between 40 and 50 dBA. Since the scale is logarithmic, a person who is exposed to a noise level of 100 dBA experiences 100,000 times the intensity of noise compared to an indi vidual subject to 50 dBA. Like most environmental problems, aircraft noise pollution has proved to be a difficult problem to remedy. It not only is a technological problem, but has political, economic and social ramifications which has made it all the more difficult to solve. The technology to reduce 38 39 jet noise at the source, the engine, exists, but the pro cedure is extremely costly. To retrofit, i.e., muffle a modern jet aircraft costs approximately $1,000,000. The problem is who is going to pay for it: the federal govern ment, the airlines, the manufacturers or the users by placing a surcharge on tickets? Even if the choice was made to retrofit aircraft or implement a crash program to produce quieter engines and the funds were available, what about the people presently living in communities adjacent to jet airports? A technical solution takes time and in the interval these individuals would still suffer from exposure to the noise. Since 1959 there have only been incremental re ductions in the noise levels around the large metropolitan airports in the United States and the conflict over air craft noise continues. The purpose of this chapter is to discuss why it has been such a difficult problem to solve. There are two reasons that are particularly important and will form the basis of the discussion. They are: (1) lack of a coherent aircraft noise policy-making system and (2) the problem of finding a technological solution which is both economically and politically feasible. Examples from the Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) noise contro versy will also be included. 40 Lack of a Coherent Aircraft Noise Policy-Making System The question of whose responsibility aircraft noise is has never been adequately resolved. The 1964 Supreme Court decision Griggs v. Allegheny County, placed the re sponsibility of compensation to individuals adversely 3 affected by aircraft operations on the airport operator. While litigation against the airport operator may economi cally indemnify the homeowner or apartment rentor for costs they may have incurred because of aircraft noise, this type of action does nothing about reducing the noise level itself. Local city governments along with groups and indi viduals affected by jet noise have taken an adversary n position regarding the noise and have repeatedly criticized the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), and the airport # operator for not taking positive action to alleviate the problem. For example, the City of Inglewood, which is under the four approach paths to LAX, has been actively involved in the noise problem since the beginning of regu lar jet service in 1959. Within a few months from the time the first jets began to land at LAX, Inglewood initiated its first study of the impact of commercial jet aircraft on property values, residents1 health and "community peace." The study was 41 finished in September, 1959 with one of the conclusions being that aircraft noise was one of the factors responsible for the high vacancy rate in rental property. In November, the first discussions over whether the city could regulate the air space over it occurred in a city council meeting. These developments initiated a series of actions by the Inglewood city government which would extend up to the present. The large-scale involvement of the city in the noise problem, however, did not occur until the airport opened its northern runway to jet traffic in 1967. The airport manage ment said safety requirements promted its use and that the decision was made by the FAA. The result of this runway being used by jets was that a considerable portion of Ingle wood would be exposed to jet noise for the first time. This has been a basic point of dispute between the impacted communities and the governmental agencies concerned with air transportation. To the FAA and the airport, the pri mary emphasis is on operational safety. Cities like Inglewood, while not disputing the need for safety con siderations, have to suffer from the increase in noise level that may result. This has led to frequent accusa tions by both sides alleging a lack of understanding of their respective positions. 42 In 1969, Inglewood hired an acoustical engineer. The city had adopted the strategy that it would pass a noise ordinance which among its provisions was a 90 dBA limit on aircraft in violation of FAA regulations on glide scope altitudes. Any plane in violation of this provision would be cited by the city. The role of the engineer was to set up an elaborate monitering system which would measure the altitude and decibel level of aircraft approaching LAX. The initial investment was $120,000 and the program requires an annual expenditure of $100,000. This strategy put Inglewood into direct confronta tion with the FAA over the control of air space. The decision by the judge in a similar case in New York summarizes the issues involved: There is credible evidence that the noise of an aircraft overflight in Hempstead is frequently intense enough to interrupt sleep, conversation, and the conduct of religious services and to submerge for the duration of the maximum noise part of the overflight the sound of the radio, phonograph and television...interrupt classroom activities in schools and be a source of dis comfort to the ill and distraction to the well. The disadvantage of the defendent town from continuance of the operation of Kennedy Airport on substantially the present basis is outweighed by the advantage to the total social interest, including that of the inhabitants of the town, in the continued operation of Kennedy Airport in its present legal framework.4 43 On March 18, 1971 the City of Inglewood filed a misdemeanor complaint against Continental Airlines for violation of their noise ordinance. But in a subsequent legal ruling by the U.S. District Court the ordinance, like the Hempstead provisions, was invalidated on the basis of federal pre-emption of air space. Local civic action, like that of the City of Ingle wood, is symptomatic of the reluctance of the air transport industry and the FAA to take strong steps to reduce jet aircraft noise. While there have been incremental reduc tions in the noise level, two factors work against any broad-range attack on the problem being implemented. First, noise abatement procedures, as described above, often directly conflict with aircraft safety standards. In a ten-point program for alleviating aircraft noise, Inglewood recommended steps that could be taken by the air industry. Two of the recommendations, runway extensions and increase in glide slopes, had been repeatedly rejected by the FAA for safety reasons. A third suggestion, quieter engines, would require a hugh capital investment. In 1970, Clifton Moore, general manager of LAX, estimated that it would cost $1 billion to retrofit the existing fleet of commercial jet aircraft. 44 Offsetting this, however, has been increased cooperation between the various levels of government involved in the problem. An important consequence has been the beginning of an aircraft noise policy system with emphasis on solving the problem rather than defending current policies and depending upon fragmented local solutions. The first major step in this direction was taken by the airport operators. Los Angeles International Airport is one of the three independent agencies of the City of Los Angeles. It is financially independent of the city and its public authority status, like most airports, insulates it from public pressure.^ But due to the Griggs v. Allegheny decision, the airport operator has been held liable for property damages, nuisance and inverse condemnation claims based on aircraft operation. Beginning with the filing of a $2 million lawsuit in 1964 by homeowners claiming inverse condemnation, legal suits against the airport continued until by May, 1972 it faced over $4 billion in claims. This prompted the city attorney to recommend closing the airport within 30 days unless the federal government and the airlines assumed responsibility for the damages. 45 The airport operator is in an ambiguous position. It must assume the legal responsibility for claims based on aircraft noise, but because of federal pre-emption of air space it can do nothing about the source of the noise, the aircraft itself. Any changes in landing procedures must have FAA approval so that alternatives open to an airport based on this is limited. A statement by Francis T. Fox, former general manager of LAX, typifies the frustration of the airport operator: We are tired of being scapegoats for the airlines and the manufacturers. As airport operators, we can exercise no control over the types of air craft being built for the airlines, we have no control over flight patterns or air routes or airline schedules. In brief this is a federal matter and the sooner we achieve the necessary legislation the sooner the public can be assured of noise relief.6 In December, 1972 the Los Angeles Board of Airport Commissioners acted in this direction by adopting a five- phase program which included over-ocean approaches for all aircraft between 11:00 P.M. and 6:00 A.M. This decision was particularly significant for Inglewood residents since the normal approach is over the city. Also, if weather conditions did not permit over-ocean approaches only air craft meeting Part 36 of the Federal Air Regulations regarding noise standards for certification of new air craft would be allowed to land from the east, over Inglewood. 46 The second phase of the program involved a schedule of incentive landing fees based on a plane’s noise level with the noisier aircraft paying more. The long-range significance of these steps according to the airport management was to motivate the manufacturers to produce quieter engines and the Congress and the Administration 7 to act. Not until 1972 did the Congress enact any compre hensive noise legislation although recognition of the need for federal action extends back to the inception of jet O passenger service in 1959. As early as 1966 a conference on jet aircraft noise sponsored by the Office of Science and Technology concluded that the federal government was the only part of the air transport industry not comprised by economic interests and should, therefore, take the initiative in looking for a solution to jet aircraft 9 noise. The State of California has also been critical of the reluctance of the federal government to take a leading role in jet noise abatement. At a conference on aircraft noise in Los Angeles in 1971, Joseph R. Crotti, Director of the California Department of Aeronautics criticized the lack of federal initiative and this forced the state to become involved in noise regulation."^ The result was 47 the adoption of a program by the Department of Aeronautics which has as its goal the reduction of jet noise by fifteen decibels in the next fifteen years. The airport operators would be responsible for determining the appropriate CNEL (Community Noise Equivalent Level) for their respective airports with final approval by the Department of Aeronau tics. Once the noise levels were approved, counties would enforce the regulations and fines up to $1,000 levied against violators. This action was quite controversial and a suit against the act filed by the Air Transport Association claiming federal pre-emption of air space is now pending, Gordon Stevenson argues that the need for public policy in relationship to aircraft noise has resulted from the inability of private actors, e.g., the airlines and manufacturers, to resolve the problem. Efforts by the courts, local and state governments, airport operators 11 and the federal government have also been inadequate. There is evidence from the developments in the Los Angeles International Airport noise controversy, however, that the situation may be changing. The activity of local communi ties, groups and individuals have resulted in the airport changing its role from being antagonistic toward their 48 claims to an advocate and pressure group for comprehensive federal noise abatement legislation. Robert Goodman in a monograph on the LAX aircraft noise conflict states: ...local action can have a more significant impact than Stevenson (The Politics of Airport Noise) thinks is possible. Local action inevitably is influenced by state and national developments, but we find that significant issues not only are raised at the local level but can be dealt with there as w e l l . 12 Quiet communities around metropolitan jet airports are not yet a reality. But a consensus is developing that the problem requires positive action by the air transport industry and the federal government. This represents a major change from the early 1960's when the FAA and the airport operators played primarily an adversary role toward community concerns about aircraft noise and the local community was completely saddled with the "spill over" costs of jet noise. For the first time a coherent policy system is developing around the question of air craft noise and responsibility for the solution of the problem is being assumed by local, state and federal agencies. 49 The Problem of Finding a Technological Solution Which Is Both Economically and Politically Feasible There are three alternative ways to reduce the impact of jet aircraft noise: (1) reduce the noise at the source, the engine, (2) alter landing and takeoff procedures and (3) develop compatible land-use. Reducing engine noise offers the best long-range potential since it does not depend upon local conditions which might make either changes in flight procedures or compatible land-use infeasible. But a 1966 conclusion of the President's Jet Noise Aircraft Panel was that while it was technically feasible to suppress jet noise, it was 13 not practical economically. There have been develop ments in engine technology which have resulted in the new jumbo jets like the Boeing 747 being considerably quieter than the earlier generations of jet aircraft, but there remains the problem of how to finance the necessary engine modifications to quiet the older aircraft. From an economic perspective, aircraft noise represents an externality. While it is a necessary part of the production process, i.e., air transportation, it has negative spill-over effects. Persons who reside in areas adjacent to jet airports can incur substantial costs from exposure to the noise such as declining 50 property values, psychological and physiological disabili ties, but do not receive any compensation from those producing the noise. The effects of jet noise on the local resident are, therefore, exerted outside the market system. An alternative is to take these costs and place them back into the costs of production. This could be achieved by placing a tax on the consumer, the airline passenger."^ The tax revenue could be used for indemni fying homeowners for costs incurred from the noise, developing quieter engines or retrofitting of the jet aircraft presently in use. An important consideration with this type of approach is how much should the user be taxed. Writing on the economic costs of air pollution, Ronald Ridker argues: From a social point of view the best level which to set the standard (of regulation) is where the costs of pollution and the costs of control, taken together, are minimum. b The determination of where the two curves inter sect can be quite complicated. For example, the relation ship between the amount spent on retrofitting engines and the reduction in the decibels that are emitted may not be linear. Current estimates are that it costs $1,000,000 51 to retrofit a modern jet aircraft and assume, hypotheti cally that this will result in a 10 dBA reduction in the noise level. But to reduce the noise another 5 dBA, an expenditure of $2,000,000 would be needed. In this case, the benefit received from the additional 5 dBA reduction in the noise may not outweigh its cost. A limitation with this type of model is that the gains and losses achieved from a particular program of noise abatement can be expressed in dollars and cents. Some economists argue that there are drawbacks with economic models when used to estimate social costs and ultimately it involves a question of politically estab lishing what is the most equitable distribution of costs and benefits: The cost to airlines of reducing noise and the cost to householders of soundproofing their dwellings can no doubt be calculated in monetary terms. But the gain to house holders from a reduction in noise cannot. Hence deciding what measures should be taken involves: ascertaining the cheapest way of achieving various reductions in noise levels; choosing the reduction to aim at; deciding who should bear the cost; and the two latter issues which are interdependent, both involve judgments of fairness or what I am calling political considerations.1° Any comprehensive cost-benefit approach would require federal legislation. The airport operator, air craft manufacturers and the airlines do not have the 52 necessary financial resources and federal pre-emption of air space precludes any regulation of the aircraft itself. In lieu of federal aircraft noise legislation, efforts at noise abatement have been primarily restricted to individual airports and based on changes in flight procedures and/or achieving compatible land-use. Legal suits have been described by some as a method of noise abatement, but it only benefits the people who take legal action and does nothing to reduce the noise level. How ever, as a spur to governmental action, as the LAX case illustrates, it can serve a useful function. Procedure changes can only incrementally reduce the impact of aircraft noise on a community. A pilot, for example, can do only two things to reduce noise, climb faster or reduce power. But these two alternatives work against each other because it takes more power to 17 climb faster. LAX has been experimenting with various changes in landing procedures since 1959 when the glide scope was raised from 2 3/4 to 3 degrees. The major operational change occurred in April, 1973 when an opposing flow procedure was instituted between 11:00 P.M. and 6:00 A.M. Aircraft approach from over the ocean and thus avoid 53 residential areas. Also implemented at this time was a graduated scale of landing fees based on aircraft decibel levels. However, as described earlier, a major purpose of this program is to pressure the federal government and the aircraft manufacturers into more positive action. The fact that a primary reason behind the imple mentation of this noise abatement program was to pressure other actors involved with commercial air transportation into greater involvement indicates the limitations inherent in changes in flight procedures as a remedy for aircraft noise. This action by LAX did produce immediate benefits for communities under the approach paths since they do not experience jet noise during evening hours and it exempli fies the airport's commitment to alleviating the impact of noise on the communities adjacent to it, but jets using LAX are still extremely loud and the noise level is un changed for those areas parallel to the runways. Often used in conjunction with procedure changes by airports as a means of noise abatement is zoning or condemnation to achieve compatible land-use. This was stressed by the Director of the LAX Sound Abatement Coordinating Committee in remarks before a California legislative committee. He emphasized the importance of approaching aircraft noise from a systems perspective with 54 consideration being given to a number of methods of noise 18 abatement and in particular, compatible land-use. Zoning as a noise abatement technique has received considerable attention. It has distinct advantages for airports which are going to be located in relatively undeveloped areas, but in metropolitan areas it poses several problems. First, zoning ordinances do not apply retroactively. Past land-use can continue irrespective of the proscriptions of the new ordinance. This means residential enclaves could remain around an airport even if the area was zoned for commercial purposes. A more important limitation of zoning is the possibility of a "taking" being claimed by affected residents when their neighborhood is rezoned. This can be very costly since they would have to be compensated for 19 the value of their property. The problem of compatible land-use has been a hotly contested issue between LAX and the surrounding communities. Initially, only the southern runways were used for jet aircraft. There was a third runway at that time located on the other side of the airport, but it was not used for jet aircraft. In the early 1960's, however, increased air traffic resulted in jet aircraft using the runway when the southerly runways were closed for maintainance 55 or unusual weather conditions prevailed. When this runway was in use a large portion of Inglewood and all of West chester, which normally would not be affected, were exposed to the noise. The continued use of this runway reignited the noise controversy and in October, 1967 a $36,000,000 lawsuit claiming personal and property damage was filed against the airport by the Greater Westchester Homeowners Association. Due to FAA safety regulations, homes at the end of the runways had to be condemned. A group of homeowners in one of the areas filed a petition with the Planning Com mission for a zone change from R-l to M-2 so that they could receive an equitable price for their homes. This became a strategy of many of the people whose homes were going to be purchased by the airport. Aircraft noise can lower residential property values, but if the area is rezoned to commercial or industrial uses, land values can increase appreciably. The impacted homeowners have recognized this. Commercial development around the air port has expanded rapidly since 1960. Currently, the LAX area has about 25,000,000 square feet of rental high rise office space and in 1973, alone, 2,170 new hotel rooms will be built. 56 The problem of compatible land-use became more critical in 1970 when the airport constructed a second north runway less than 300 feet from the first row of homes in Westchester. It was built to accomodate the new jumbo jets like the 747 since none of the existing runways were capable of handling the larger jets. This prompted more lawsuits and in August, 1970 the airport initiated a home purchasing program and agreed to buy any homes within 700 feet of the newly constructed runway. The rationale behind this action was that by purchasing homes up to 700 feet from the new runway the distance between the original north runway and the first row of homes would be reestablished and, of course, the hope was that this would diminish the pressures that were being placed on the airport by the residents in this area. A shortcoming with rezoning as a noise abatement tool, as the LAX experience shows, is that it cannot func tion as an adequate substitute for comprehensive land-use planning. While LAX had a master plan since 1944 which included mention of possible expansion to its northern boundary there was virtually no contact between the city agencies responsible for land development on the implica tions of this for residential housing in the areas adjacent to the airport. Over the years residential building 57 permits were issued with no forethought about the possible consequences of airport expansion. The result was economi cally costly to the citizens of Los Angeles since their tax money paid for the purchases and the many residents who had to relocate were placed under considerable emotional strain because of the ordeal. By January, 1973 the airport had spent over $50 million to purchase property because of north runway operations and while this moved many residents away from the noise source, although 40 percent relocated to another home in the immediate area, the noise level was not actu ally reduced and consequently, of no benefit to residents not involved in the purchases. This suggests that com patible land-use as a noise abatement tool for airports in metropolitan areas is of limited utility and that it is the most controversial and least satisfactory of the various alternatives that have been tried. 58 Conclusion Since 1959 there have only been incremental re ductions in the jet noise level in the communities adjacent to the major metropolitan airports in the United States, but there have been significant changes in the aircraft noise policy-making process. Most importantly, there has been recognition by the air transport industry including the federal govern ment and the public authorities operating airports that aircraft noise is a major problem to people who reside next to jet airports. The inertia of the federal govern ment and the antagonistic response of the airport operator to community claims about aircraft noise have been replaced by an increasingly coherent policy process with major governmental actors assuming responsibility for the re duction of the noise level. This development, however, did not occur without an extended political struggle involving anti-noise ordinances passed by local communities, individual and group legal action and a continual "passing of the buck" by the public and private sectors involved in air transpor tation. The turning point was the realization by the airport operator, the five-phase noise abatement program 59 adopted by Los Angeles International Airport being a pri mary example, that the problem no longer could be ignored and that the federal government would have to take positive action if the conflict was to be resolved. Also federal preemption of air space, aircraft noise being a national problem and the potential economic costs involved all pointed to the eventual involvement of the federal govern ment . 7 1 The policy process has been incremental. Alternative policies have never been clearly articulated and the various noise abatement programs have been imple mented only on a piecemeal, local basis. The consequences of adopting one course of action as compared to another, such as procedure changes versus quieter engines, has received only marginal attention. A provocative question is whether this would have 2 2 been possible anyway. The conflict has been political and not simply over what is the most efficient means of noise abatement. Aircraft noise is a negative spillover of the air transportation process and as long as the industry itself does not have to pay to reduce the noise, it results in lower costs. To the local resident, in contrast, it is a continual source of personal irritation. The conflict centers on the reallocation of the costs away 60 from the resident and back into the production process, but the crucial decisions are political, not economic. The degree to which jet noise ceases to be an issue of public policy in the near future will depend upon the ability of the political process to produce an equitable distribution of the costs of aircraft noise. 61 FOOTNOTES ^Aircraft noise tends to be a much greater problem around major metropolitan airports than outlying city airports. One of the main reasons is the considerably lower volume of air traffic at smaller airprots. For an explanation of the differences see National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Community Reaction to Aircraft Noise Around Smaller City Airports, by William K. Conners and Harold P. Patterson, NASA CR-2104 (Washington, D. C.: National Information Technical Service, 1972). A comprehensive discussion of the effects that noise can have on health is W. Dixon Ward and James E. Fricke, eds., Noise as a Public Health Hazard (Washington, D. C.: American Speech and Hearing Association, 1961). ^Griggs v. Allegheny, 369 U.S. 84 (1962). Also see William F. Baxter and Lillian Altree, "Legal Aspects of Airport Noise," Journal of Law and Economics 15 (April 1972) :1-13. ^American Airlines v. Hempstead, 272 F. Supp. 226 (E.D.N.Y. 1966). ^Public authorities have been repeatedly criticized for their lack of political accountability. For a compre hensive analysis of this dimension of urban government see Robert G. Smith, Public Authorities, Special Districts and Local Governments (Washington, D. C.: National Association of Counties, 1964). ^Los Angeles Times, February 7, 1969. For various perspectives on the problem of intergovernmental coordina tion over aircraft noise abatement see "FAA Fears Political Tug-of-War on Noise Abatement." Aviation Week 85 (December 5, 1966):36-3'7 and "FAA, Environmental Protection Agency Seek Control of Aircraft Noise Rules," Aviation Week 97 (October 2, 1972):21-22. ^Los Angeles Times, December 21, 1972. 62 g Under the Noise Control Act of 197 2 the Environ mental Protection Agency coordinates federal activities and makes policy recommendations in the area of aircraft noise control. The actual determination of noise standards is the responsibility of the Federal Aviation Administra tion. Environmental Protection Agency guidelines announced on July 27, 1973 included adaptation of regulations con cerning flight and operations, reduction of engine noise and noise levels around airports. Solutions such as quieter engines, home soundproofing and compatible land- use were estimated to cost between $5 billion and $20 billion compared to $700 million for the installation of padding in jet engines. ^Office of Science and Technology, Alleviation of Jet Aircraft Noise Near Airports: A Report of the Jet Aircraft Noise Panel (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1966) , 4. •^Inglewood, (Calif.) Daily News, January 22, 1971. •^Gordon McKay Stevenson, Jr., The Politics of Air- port Noise (Belmont, Calif.: Duxbury Press, 197 2) , 129- TTST ■^Robert Goodman, "Airport Noise and the Changing Pattern of Airport-Community Politics," working paper of the Center for Urban Affairs, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, February 1973. 1 ^ Office of Science and Technology, Alleviation of Jet Aircraft Noise Near Airports: A Report of the Jet Aircraft Noise Panelj 5-6. ■^This alternative is advocated by Paul K. Dygert, "A Public Enterprise Approach to Jet Aircraft Noise Around Airports," in Alleviation of Jet Aircraft Noise Near Air ports: A Report of the Jet Aircraft Noise Panel^ Office of Science and Technology7, 107-116. ■^Ronald G. Ridker, Economic Costs of Air Pollution: Studies in Measurement (New York: Praeger, 1967) , 6 " ! •^Ralph Turvey, "Side Effects of Resource Use," in Environmental Quality in a Growing Economy, ed., Henry Jarrett (Baltimore: John Hopkins Press, 1966), 52. 63 17 Statement by Captain Paul Soderline, chief test pilot for Northwest Airlines, at the National Organization to Insure a Sound-Controlled Environment (NOISE) Symposium, Los Angeles, Calif., January 21, 1971. ^Statement by Walter V. Collins, Director of Los Angeles Sound Abatement Coordinating Committee, before the California Legislative Assembly Committee on National Resources and Conservation, Sacramento, Calif., January 3, 1973. •^Robert L. Randall, "Possibilities of Achieving a Quiet Society," in Alleviation of Jet Aircraft Noise Near Airports: A Report of the Jet Aircraft Noise Panel, Office " ’ of Science ana Technology, 150. ^Robert A. Sigafoos, "LA Airport Seen as Potent Force in Area's Economy," Los Angeles Times, February 25, 1973, sec. 10, 1. ^Charles E. Lindblom, "The Science of 'Muddling Through,'" Public Administration Review 19 (Spring 1959): 79-88. ^^Schon argues that the view that technological development is a process of change that is rationally managed and planned is an ideology rather than an accurate assessment of the technological process. Technology is not a neutral instrument of change, but capable of being fundamentally disruptive of established social patterns. Donald A. Schon, Technology and Change (New York: Dell, 1967). CHAPTER IV INDIVIDUAL-LEVEL POLITICAL RESPONSES TO AIRCRAFT NOISE A major conclusion of Chapter III is that while communities adjacent to major metropolitan airports are still exposed to significant levels of aircraft noise, a coherent noise abatement policy system is developing which includes local, state and federal authorities. Los Angeles International Airport (LAX), for example, has implemented opposing flow landing procedures during late evening and early morning house which results in approaching aircraft coming in over the ocean rather than residential areas. The California State Department of Aeronautics has adopted a fifteen-year noise abatement program which is based on individual airports setting their own CNEL (Community Noise Equivalent Level) standards. The federal Noise Control Act of 1972 has empowered the Environmental Protection Agency to coordinate federal noise abatement activities and tentative EPA guidelines were announced in July, 1972 which include regulations on flight procedures to reduce jet noise emissions. 64 65 These policy developments, while substantial, are a result of a protracted political conflict between the air transportation industry which includes the FAA, local air ports and airlines and residents of noise-impacted communities. In the case of Los Angeles International Airport the conflict extends back to 1959, the beginning of regular jet passenger service. The main characteristic of the conflict through the late 1960's was the ability of governmental agencies, in particular the FAA and public authorities administering local airports, to avoid having to make any major policy decisions regarding jet aircraft noise abatement. "Non decisions" were the central elements in the policy-making system: Political systems and sub-systems develop a 'mobilization of bias,' a set of predominant values, beliefs, rituals and institutional procedures ('rules of the game') that operate systematically and consistently to the benefit of certain persons and groups at the expense of others.... The primary method for sustaining a given mobilization of bias is nondecision making. A nondecision, as we define it, is a decision that results in a suppression or thwarting of a latent or manifest challenge to the values or interests of the decision maker . 1 The primary reason no governmental action was taken was that these agencies did not feel the problem of aircraft noise was their responsibility. They defined 66 their role primarily in technical terms, the provision of efficient and safe air transportation, not solving community problems. This attitude is particularly characteristic of public authorities like Los Angeles International Airport. Banfield and Wilson argue that a main consequence of the independent political and economic status of public authorities has been that "they are in a position to do very much as they please" and "in effect undemocratic." A similar criticism is made by Victor Jones. He feels that authorities have resulted in the replacement of public control of government by the decisions of professional administrators and their clien tele groups (in the case of airports, these groups are • z the airlines). In a related point, Robert G. Smith lists the general public as only one of the four constituencies a public authority has. The others are bondholders, users of the authority's services who pay the charges (airlines) 4 and the parent government. Lack of political accountability is also a characteristic of regulatory agency behavior. Lowi includes the FAA among those fully autonomous federal agencies he criticizes in his "interest-group liberalism" argument.^ Policy-making power in these agencies, accord ing to Lowi, is distributed among "support group 67 constituencies," which in the case of the FAA are the air ports and airlines. The consequence has been a substitution of organized economic interests for the public interest in regulatory policy-making. It follows from these points that the reduction of aircraft noise levels on impacted communities depended upon the ability of residents in these areas to open up the air transport policy system to outside influences. In the case of the Los Angeles International jet noise controversy, this began with a $2 million lawsuit filed against the air port in 1964, The strategy, although uncoordinated and fragmented, was to pressure LAX to take noise abatement steps by appealing to political actors outside the sub system, i.e., the courts and elected officials. The effect, according to Robert Goodman in a monograph on the LAX situation, was to make "noise indirectly costly economically and politically to the local proprietor and the industry as a whole.A similar argument is made by Michael Parenti in a study of Black political action in ghetto areas: Party politicians are inclined to respond not to group needs but group demands, and in political life as in economic life needs do not become marketable demands until they are backed up by 'buying power' or 'exchange power' for only then is it in the 'producer's' interest to respond.7 68 The analysis that follows is based on survey data and attempts to assess the factors leading to a person making the choice to become politically active in relation to the aircraft noise problem. Underlying the "group de mands" Parenti refers to are those "group needs" whether public officials are concerned about them or not. People are trying to fulfill needs that they are denied or per ceive as possibly being denied in the future. In the case of the aircraft noise problem at Los Angeles International Airport it is the desire of people to maintain the quality of living in their neighborhoods which they feel is threatened by the presence of aircraft noise. This concern may be narrowly focused on the possible effects that the noise may have on property values, more broadly based on its impact on "life style" considerations such as personal interactions with neighbors or only involve instances of personal inconvenience like interruption of television viewing or sleeping. Orbell and Uno consider this to be an element of political participation which is often overlooked: Although perhaps broad theoretical works do imply a problem-solving motive when they talk about 'demand making,' empirical studies of participation characteristically focus on status and psychological-attitudinal determinants of voting. High-status people are found to participate more than low-status people, men 69 more than women, the middle-aged more than the young and old.... They further state that the behavioral approach to the study of political participation does not give enough "recognition to the social and political context of participation and how his perception of that context influences what the individual does."^ Political participation is not only an individual or micro-level phenomenon, but also has consequences at a 1 0 community or macro-level. Aircraft noise not only affects individual living habits, but can influence the future development of a neighborhood or community. Nathan Hare has hypothesized that aircraft noise may be creating markets for low-income housing by depreciating property values though making neighborhoods less residentially attractive. ^ Political action directed at such a problem does not only represent the efforts of individuals to fulfill personal needs regarding a living environment. Such activity may have a "spillover" effect in that communities as well as individuals can benefit from it. In Inglewood, one of the cities included in the sample, individual and group activity led to the active involve ment of the city government itself. This broadened the scale of political activity and increased the level of 70 resources that could be expended against the problem. This also had the effect of reducing the cost of political action for the individual resident. Perception of the scale of the problem also changed. It was now a community problem and some of its "spillover" effects, such as its impact on community socio-economic structure, began to be evaluated. This led, in turn to a realization that aircraft noise was an inter-community problem and that solving the problem for Inglewood, for example, would not necessarily reduce the level of jet noise in other communities. Consequently, political participation should be evaluated not only from the per spective of the individual but also as part of the general transactions that characterize the urban political process. 71 Sampling Procedure The survey from which the data is drawn focused on the political and personal dimensions of the aircraft noise problem in communities adjacent to Los Angeles Interna tional Airport.^ The questionnaire is in Appendix A. Interviews were conducted by telephone during August, 197 2. A 239 person disproportional stratified sample was drawn from the Airport Area Telephone Directory published by Pacific Telephone. Samples were taken from the communities of Inglewood, El Segundo, Westchester, Emerson Manor and West Westchester. These communities are either parallel to the airport runways or under the final approach paths. See Figure 4:1. Two of the communities, Inglewood and El Segun do, are incorporated. Westchester is a part of the City of Los Angeles. Emerson Manor and West Westchester are neighborhoods within Westchester, but are sampled separately due to the research design. Both of the areas have been active in relation to the noise problem. The sixth community, Lennox, is unincorporated and under the juris diction of the County of Los Angeles. A problem often cited in regard to telephone sur veys is the reluctance of the respondent to answer questions over the telephone.^ However, this did not prove to be a problem. Only 2 of the 241 individuals contacted FIGURE 4:1 LOS ANGELES INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT APPROACH PATHS AND SAMPLE COMMUNITIES 72 CO - r - . if 1 * ' : * ■ ! i\-i^ w-’ijw4ie4'' j^rqca^ata ‘ jU • ‘ i i I S * * P;Ufflg; ' - ] * ' • * * * • . • ~~ti.-,y<irr*j,r| T \ s - v ' ' J&i&'Jt— ■ T J : 3S - ^ . »W:^ i i - . ' ! l V ^ T^fijWS sz=. i ■X* ::(■ ■•"s n . ‘/ V * r Si o c m n I L g M t i i a t i i A «S> ', , '- < |U ' :* ' I i i v : • I i * » » TVNOIJLVNM3JLN P”- E-i • ^ r " ' ]7 f c rr^V^ I f j ' ■ ■ » j j ^'Tr ' ^ 5 _ , a - \'M=S W f r a * £ , « i o . O M 3 i 5 > N r - *-.- 7 -H i* i J x { j -v ____ ; „■; jL -r* »*J f t h - w g - ■'1=1 — . <*-“ * ' _ * 1 I B313 - t —m , - . ■ « - i ' ? * • • v >* i \.\' . ;i h i 't i A h ; . On ■'t '. j' rr". > / s i a g a s s f c ■ £ C l + - I 74 declined to answer the questions. The completion rate was approximately 70 percent which falls within the generally accepted range of 50-80 percent for telephone surveys.14 We expected to be unable to contact some of the subjects (a subject was dropped from the sample if after three calls we were unable to contact him) and that a number of telephones would be disconnected due to a change of 15 residence, new telephone number, etc. Due to these 16 problems, an initial sample of 350 respondents was drawn. But there is a problem with this procedure in that the sample may be biased if the subjects that are dropped differ in significant respects from those included. An additional drawback in the sampling design is that the telephone directory was used as the sampling list. Estimates by the local telephone company were that 10 per cent of the telephones in the area were unlisted and 4 percent of the households did not have phones. This introduces a source of sampling error if generalizations to the actual communities are made instead of just to the 17 population listed in the directory. The sample is stratified by community for two reasons. First, we want to make comparisons across communities. Since the sample is relatively small and there is considerable variation in population between 75 the sampled communities (a range of 87,400 with the maxi mum value 90,900 and the minimum 3,500) stratifying by community is the only guarantee that there will be a sufficient number of cases for statistical purposes. Secondly, the political activity directed at the noise problem has been centered in particular areas, most notably Emerson Manor and West Westchester. Propor tionally, they constitute only 2 and 6 percent of the sampled population. It is necessary to sample dispro- portionally from these neighborhoods to ensure they are 18 adequately represented. A problem with the stratification procedure is that the population estimates are not based on the communi ty proportions in the telephone directory, but on the actual population figures. This may be a source of sam pling error since the two proportions may not coincide. If the telephone directory is defined as the population, the appropriate proportions should be based on the totals in the directory. An estimate by the telephone company placed 33 percent of the total number of telephones in the Airport Area directory in Westchester, 56 percent in Inglewood and Lennox and 11 percent in El Segundo. The actual population totals are, respectively, 28, 63 and 9 percent. There are a number of possible reasons for 76 these differences. As mentioned above, 10 percent of the hhones are unlisted and 4 percent of the households do not have a telephone. Two of the prefixes, 8,808 of a total of 49,351 residential listings for the areas, overlap between Westchester, Inglewood and Lennox. The two per centages for El Segundo, 9 and 11 percent, are closer since the particular prefix is used only for residences in El Segundo. An alternative procedure would have been to count the actual number of listings by community in the directory But with approximately 55,000 residential listings and Lennox listed as Inglewood and the Westchester communities as Los Angeles this would have proven prohibitive. This is why the decision was made to use actual population esti mates rather than directory proportions as the basis of 19 stratification. It was felt the time and cost involved in totaling the director proportions overrode the increase in sampling efficiency that would result. Sampling accuracy, assuming the above sources of error are minimal, is 6-7 percent with a risk level of .05. This is based on an estimate of maximum variability on political activity levels, i.e.,50 percent of the 77 population has had some involvement politically in the air port noise problem. This estimate should be on the 20 conservative side. Given the limitations in the sampling design, the survey should be considered exploratory. The potential sources of error are enough so that a significance test may not be able to give a valid estimate of the possibility of sampling error. Blalock argues, in fact, that "whenever lists are incomplete or whenever a large percentage of persons must be considered as non-respondents, we have in ? 1 effect another example of nonprobability sampling." While these criteria may be strict for the purpose of sampling in the social sciences, they do point to basic drawbacks in the present design. Since there are problems with the sampling design any of the relationships that are found to be statistically significant should be considered tentative. Even if a more accurate estimate could be made, there is an additional problem since the data is weighted. All risk measurements are based on the assumption of a random sample. While both proportional and disproportional stratified samples have similar risk and accuracy levels there is a certain amount of error particularly when some cases receive weights greater that one. Also, in a strict statistical 78 sense, if the sample is anything other than a simple random sample the various parametric and nonparametric measures cannot be legitimately used unless substantial corrections in the formulas are introduced. In practice, however, this is usually overlooked in regard to nonparametric measures since they require virtually no assumptions about the 22 nature of the data. Individual-Level Correlates of Political Activity A number of variables included in the survey can be conceptualized as independent variables in relation to political activity directed at the aircraft noise problem. They are: (1) Subjective annoyance with aircraft noise (2) Type and length of residence (3) Attitude toward the airport's sense of political responsibility Two other variables are included in the analysis which are based on aggregate data. Each respondent was located by census tract and assigned the SES (socio economic status) level for that tract. The index is based on income, educational and occupational data. A measure of a person's objective exposure to aircraft noise is also included. This was determined by overlaying a 1970 79 Noise Exposure Forecast (NEF) contour on the census tracts. An average NEF level for each tract was computed and each respondent assigned the score for the tract in which he 23 resides. A more complete explanation of this procedure is presented in Chapter VI. The independent variables represent socio-psycho- logical, attitudinal, demographic and physical factors. The relationship between each of the variables and politi cal activity will be analyzed separately and then their combined effect will be examined. Political activity will also be discussed in terms of the types and levels of participation. The Dimensions of Individual and Group Political Activity Of the 239 persons interviewed, only 5 percent (12) are members of community organizations active in the aircraft noise problem. Most of these groups are general service organizations such as women's clubs or neighbor hood associations comprised of property owners. Only two of the ten organizations named were formed specifically because of the aircraft noise problem. This is perhaps why six of the twelve people who belonged to these groups said they had not personally been active in the aircraft noise area. 80 For two of the more politically active communities, Emerson Manor and West Westchester, an additional series of questions were asked. We had expected to find a higher level of organizational involvement in these neighborhoods since there are a number of groups in the area which focus specifically on airport noise and they have held numerous community meetings on the problem and conducted door-to- door petition campaigns. Bot only one of the nineteen people interviewed is personally active in any of the organizations. Sixty- six percent (13) consider themselves indifferent to the goals the groups are trying to accomplish while just 28 percent (5) support them. A larger percentage of persons have engaged in other forms of political activity. Twelve percent (30) have attended a community meeting where the topic has been discussed. Ten percent (24) report some type of personal involvement such as signing a petition or contacting a local official. Political activity will be operationally defined as whether a person has participated in any of the activi ties described above: membership in a community group which has dealt with the problem or attended a meeting where the topic was considered or has been personally 81 involved in trying to solve the problem. The intensity or frequency of involvement is not considered since the general pattern of activity has been sporadic. Seventy- six percent of the instances of political activity were performed by a person who did not participate in any other way. Based on this index, 21 percent (50) of the sample can be defined as politically active. This figure is comparable with data from other studies of political parti cipation in local communities. In a cross-national sample, 28 percent of the Americans interviewed stated that one time or another they had attempted to influence their 24 local governments. A survey of the adult electorate in four Wisconsin cities found 28 percent of the sample high on local political interest, information, attendance at community meetings and voting.^ The data indicates that individual-level political responses to the aircraft noise problem in communities adjacent to Los Angeles International Airport is similar to the general pattern of citizen participation in local communities. Only a relatively small number of people are politically involved to any extent and even with these individuals, their participation is short-term and usually restricted to one type of activity. 82 Political activity, as a type of neighborhood problem-solving, is only chosen by a small minority of residents. In the next sections, a number of factors that may be related to their choice to become politically involved will be examined. For example, are persons who are politically active more annoyed and/or more exposed to aircraft noise than non-active residents. Do they have a more negative attitude toward the airport? Or is the fact that a person is politically active simply a function of his socio-economic status and not related to any variables that are specifically associated with the noise problem? Subjective annoyance and objective exposure Fifty-nine percent (139) of the respondents express some degree of annoyance with jet noise. This means that a majority of residents in the communities adjacent to Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) are bothered by the noise. Only a small number of these individuals, how ever, have tried to do anything about it. Just 29 percent (40) indicate that they have engaged in some type of political activity directed at reducing the noise. Table 4:1 indicates that politically involved persons are more likely to find jet noise more disturbing 83 TABLE 4:1 POLITICAL ACTIVITY BY SUBJECTIVE ANNOYANCE Political Activity Subj ective Annoyance Yes No TOTAL No Effect 10(19%) 90(47%) 99(42%) Frequently Annoying 17(35%) 63(33%) 80(34%) Seriously Interfering or Intolerable 23(46%) 36(19%) 59 (25%) TOTAL 50(100%) 189(100%) 239(100%) SIGNIFICANCE = .0001 (Chi Square) TAU C = -.24 Errors in percentages and marginal totals due to rounding or weighting. 84 than people who have not been active. Eighty percent (40) of the politically active find the noise irritating to some degree compared to 52 percent (99) of the non-actives. They also tend to be more exposed to jet noise as measured by a Noise Effect Forecast contour, but the relationship is not as strong as between annoyance and political activity. See Table 4:2. More importantly, the relationship between annoyance and political activity is contingent upon the level of noise to which a person is exposed: (1) High Level of Objective Exposure ____________ tau-c=-.38 sig.=.003 (2) Moderate Level of Objective Exposure _________________ tau-c=-.11 sig.=.12 (3) Low Level of Objective Exposure______________ tau-c=-.19 sig.=.05 This indicates that as distance from the noise source increases, objective exposure decreases and subjective annoyance becomes a less reliable predictor of political activity although the relationship is not linear because the latter two correlations are approximately the same. While annoyance is related to exposure, a tau-c of .30 (sig.=.0000) indicates that the relationship is far from perfect. Whether a person is annoyed by jet noise 85 TABLE 4:2 POLITICAL ACTIVITY BY OBJECTIVE EXPOSURE Political Activity Obj ective Exposure Yes No TOTAL Low 14(29%) 64(34%) 77(33%) Moderate 11(23%) 70(37%) 81(34%) High 22(47%) 54(29%) 77(33%) TOTAL 47(100%) 188(100%) 235(100%) SIGNIFICANCE = .05 TAU C = -.09 Errors in percentages and marginal totals due to rounding or weighting. 86 apparently depends upon more than simply proximity to the noise source. Another variable included in the analysis which is related to annoyance is a person's attitude toward the political responsibility of the airport. The more politically irresponsible a person feels the airport is, the more likely he is to be annoyed by the noise Ctau-c=.17, sig.=.01). This finding supports a hypothesis of Paul Borsky's : If a person feels that those creating the noise care about his welfare and are doing what they can, he is usually more tolerant of the noise and is willing and able to accomodate higher levels of noise. If he feels, however, that the noise propagators are callously ignoring his needs and concerns, he is usually more likely to be hostile to the noise and more annoyed with even lower levels of noise. 26 This finding also agrees with data from a similar survey ? 7 conducted at London (Heathrow) Airport. In that study, annoyance has an r of .46 with exposure, but it also has correlations of similar strength with a number of social- psychological variables, like perceived effect of aircraft noise on health and preventability of the noise, and these relationships are generally independent of noise exposure. An attempt was made to externally verify the annoyance and exposure scales by comparing them with two other noise scales. The first is based on a respondent's location in relation to a flight path or runway. Each subject was 87 categorized by whether he resided within one-half mile of either a flight path or runway. This distance was sug gested by an acoustical engineer as a rough demarcation 2 8 between high and low noise exposures. Also, in a survey of residents' reactions to aircraft noise conducted in the LAX area, distance to the airport and relation to takeoff and approach patterns was found to be a better predictor of responses than NEF contours.^® The other indicator is a Guttman scale of activi ties that respondents said were affected by aircraft noise. The scale points are: (1) Reading (18 percent of the sample answered yes. Most difficult item) (2) Sleeping (29 percent of the sample answered yes) (3) Outdoor Activity (33 percent of the sample answered yes) (4) Conversation (48 percent of the sample answered yes) (5) Television Watching (55 percent of the sample answered yes) There are two criteria used to determine whether a scale is cumulative: (1) the coefficient of reproducibility must be at least .90 and (2) the coefficient of scalability must 30 be at least .60. The scale meets both of these criteria. 88 The coefficient of reproducibility is .90 and the co efficient of scalability is .70. Table 4:3 indicates that the four variables are all intercorrelated. In particular, the objective indi cators are strongly correlated as well as the subjective indicators. Exposure should be related to a person's distance from the noise source and the correlation indicates this. Likewise, an individual probably finds the noise annoying because it affects his everyday living activities. Since the relationships are at least of moderate strength and consistent there is evidence that the variables are measuring annoyance with and exposure to aircraft noise. This data and the earlier analysis of the relationship between these variables and political activity indicate that a variable representing how a person perceives aircraft noise should be based both on subjective and objective criteria. In the multivariate analysis of political activity an interaction variable based on annoyance and exposure will be included. This finding is different from past research where annoyance was found to have an independent effect on political .. .. 31 activity. 89 TABLE 4:3 CORRELATION MATRIX (TAU C) BETWEEN OBJECTIVE AND SUBJECTIVE INDICATORS OF AIRCRAFT NOISE Annoyance Activities Location Exposure Annoyance .76 .37 .30 Activities . 36 .30 Location .60 Exposure Definitions: Annoyance: Four-point scale based on how a person subjectively perceives aircraft noise Activities: Guttman scale of activities that are affected by aircraft noise. Five item scale. Location: Dichotomized scale. Each respondent categorized on the basis of whether he resides within one-half mile of a flight path or runway. Exposure: Based on a Noise Exposure Forecast con tour. Overlaid on census tracts and an average noise level by tract computed. Each respondent located by census tract and assigned the score for that tract. 90 Type and Length of Residence Activists also differ from non-activists in their type of dwelling and how long they have resided in the area. Seventy-nine percent (39) of the political activists reside in homes compared to 59 percent (107) of the persons who are not active. Similarly, 65 percent (32) have lived at their present residence more than five years whereas only 55 percent (104) of the non-activists have. See Tables 4:4 and 4:5. One possible reason why homeowners are more likely to be politically active than apartment renters is a fear that jet aircraft noise will lower the property values of their homes. A jet airport can increase property values if the land is zoned or rezoned for commercial purposes. But for the homeowner who wants to remain in his present residence and keep his neighborhood intact this is of little consolation. If the neighborhood remains intact there is the possibility of decreasing property values. Studies of the impact of jet aircraft noise on property values differ according to whether objective or subjective measures of its effects are used. Attitudinal surveys indicate that some homeowners feel that the value of their property is affected by jet noise, particularly 7 2 if they reside in areas adjacent to airports, A study 91 TABLE 4:4 POLITICAL ACTIVITY BY TYPE OF RESIDENCE Political Activity Yes No TOTAL Type of Residence Home 39(79%) 107(57%) 147(61%) Apartment 10(21%) 82(43%) 92(39%) TOTAL 50(100%) 189(100%) 239(100%) SIGNIFICANCE = .01 (Chi Square) TAU C = .15 Errors in percentages and marginal totals due to rounding or weighting. 92 TABLE 4:5 POLITICAL ACTIVITY BY LENGTH OF RESIDENCE Political Activity Length of Residence Yes No TOTAL More than 16 years 23(47%) 50(26%) 73(31%) 6 to 15 years 9(18%) 56(30%) 65(27%) 5 years or less 18(35%) 83(44%) 101(42%) TOTAL 50(100%) 189(100%) 239(100%) SIGNIFICANCE = .02 (Chi Square) TAU C = .12 Errors in percentages and marginal totals due to rounding or weighting. 93 in a community next to Los Angeles International Airport found no statistical relationship between decibel levels and sale prices, but the definition of impact was broadened to include insulation costs, avigation easements and liti gation and the conclusion was that jet noise does have an effect on property values.^ Length of residence may be related to political activity because the longer a person has resided in a neighborhood, the higher the probability he has made personal "investments" in that neighborhood. He may have developed personal friendships with his neighbors or made numerous improvements on his home. Past research, however, suggests that the relation ship is more complicated than this. Peter Orleans, in a study of how people perceive their urban environment, found that in low SES areas, neighborhood is an important loca tional element in people’s lives whereas in higher SES groups, occupational groups are the primary basis of social interaction. Length of residence as a predictor of political action may vary then, across the communities depending upon the particular SES level of a neighborhood. Length of residence, as an indicator of a person's commitment to his community, may also predispose a person not to perceive an environmental problem in his 94 neighborhood. Arvin Murch in a study of public attitudes toward environmental pollution concludes: The more attached or committed one is to a given environment, the less he is apt to acknowledge serious defects in it... Where pollution is serious and unmistakable, all residents are obliged to acknowledge the fact. But where the immediate environment is less obviously threatened, personal factors, such as commitment to a community, become operative to influence how one per ceives the threat to his environment.35 This hypothesis also suggests that where a person resides may affect the relationship between length of residence and political activity. If a person lives in close proxi mity to the noise source, length of residence may be a relatively poor predictor of whether he is active or not since the impact of the noise is of such magnitude that it overrides any individual characteristics that might affect a person's behavior. But as you move away from the noise source the impact is less severe and other factors intrude upon how a person perceives and reacts to the noise. Additional support for this hypothesis is provided by Douglas Lee in an article speculating on the role of attitudes in relation to environmental stress: "where conditions exceed the limits of physical tolerance, attitudes will have no more than a minor and short effect on behavior. 95 Attitude toward the airport's sense of political re sponsibility A recurrent criticism of public authorities, Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) is a politically independent department within the City of Los Angeles with control of its own finances, is that they are not politi cally accountable: The special board or authority, by its nature, is privileged to be apart from the rest of the municipal functions, and to operate with no outside interference. But this does not mean that it is obligated to ignore the rest of the municipal family as well as the public it serves. As a matter of fact, this privilege of independence should induce responsibility or cooperation and coordination encouraged by the authority itself.37 In the LAX jet noise controversy, the issue has centered on whether the airport should take responsibility for alleviation of the noise problem in impacted communi ties. The problem is also confounded by the fact that of the four communities adjacent to the airport only one, Westchester, is part of the City of Los Angeles. The question of who the airport should be politically account able to not only includes the parent government, the Los Angeles City Council and Mayor and the residents of Los Angeles but also communities outside the territorial boundaries of Los Angeles. 96 Aircraft noise is a metropolitan, not only a community problem, in that the noise ’’ produced" by one municipality has affected other municipalities. Economists refer to this type of problem as an "externality" or "spillover effect." Robert Lineberry argues that this results from the "noncongruence of policymaking units and problems." Municipal boundaries may follow particular lines of demarcation such as streets or geographical features like rivers or hills, but many urban problems transcend these boundaries. Of four aspects of govern mental fragmentation in metropolitan areas identified by Lineberry, the persistence of aircraft noise as an environmental problem is related to three of them: Cl) externalities, (2) absence of political responsibility at a metropolitan level, (3) lack of policy coordination between municipalities, (the fourth factor is fiscal and service inequities). The feeling that the airport lacks a sense of political responsibility to the communities which are adjacent to it is related to political activism. Table 4:6 indicates that 38 percent (17) of the activists feel that the airport is not politically responsible compared to only 17 percent (28) of the non-activists. The finding supports the hypothesis of Paul Borsky's which 97 TABLE 4:6 POLITICAL ACTIVITY BY AIRPORT’S SENSE OF POLITICAL RESPONSIBILITY Political Activity Airport's Sense of Political Responsibility Yes No TOTAL Strong 7(16%) 35(20%) 42(19%) Moderate 21(46%) 108 (63%) 130(60%) None 17(38%) 28(17%) 46(21%) TOTAL 46(100%) 171(100%) 217(100%) SIGNIFICANCE = .01 (Chi Square) TAU C = -.14 Errors in percentages and marginal totals due to rounding or weighting. 98 was discussed earlier. If a person who is affected by jet noise feels that those he considers responsible for the problem are trying to solve it and are concerned about his well-being, then he is less likely to be annoyed by it and to take political action himself to remedy the problem.^9 Socio-economic status Past research has established socio-economic status (SES) as the best predictor of political activity.^ Education, in particular, is cited as the major factor in producing political efficacy, the subjective feeling a person has that he can influence the political process.^ For this analysis, an index based on income, education and occupation is used. Questions pertaining to this information was not included in the survey so the data is taken from the 1970 census. Each respondent was locaetd by census tract and assigned the particular SES score for that tract. Z-scores were calculated for each of the variables so that they could be included in a common index. A drawback with this indicator is that because the variables are based on aggregate data, any individual-level inferences may involve the "ecological fallacy.Due to this problem the variable should be interpreted as 99 representing an environment in which the individual resides rather than an actual attribute he possesses. Table 4:7 indicates that a tricotimized SES scale is related to political activism. Of the variables pre viously discussed, only subjective annoyance has a higher correlation, but the difference is slight, .24 to .23 (tau c). SES is the only variable included in the analysis which is not directly related to the noise environment. Subjective annoyance, objective exposure and attitude toward the airport's sense of political responsibility are directly related as their names suggest. Type and length of residence can be interpreted as representing aspects of an individual’s living environment that air craft noise may directly threaten. Other survey studies of the impact of aircraft noise have shown that SES is an important factor in predicting whether a person complains about aircraft noise. Complainants tend to be better educated, have higher incomes and live in more expensive homes than non-complainants.^ But this is a characteristic common to most public policy issues where citizen participation is involved, not just aircraft noise. 100 TABLE 4:7 POLITICAL ACTIVITY BY S0CI0-ECONOMIC STATUS Political Activity Yes No TOTAL Socio- Economic Status Low 5(111) 76(41%) 81(35%) Medium 17(37%) 58 (31%) 75(32%) High 25(53%) 54 (29%) 79(34%) TOTAL 47 (100%) 188(100%) 235(100%) SIGNIFICANCE = .0002 TAU C = -.23 Errors in percentages and marginal totals due to rounding or weighting. 101 Combined effect of the variables on predicting political activism While each of the variables discussed above are related to political activity, the bivariate relationships do not indicate their combined effect in determining wheth er a person will become politically involved in the aircraft noise problem nor which of the variables are the most important predictors of political activism. To examine these questions multiple regression can be em ployed, but this will require that the indicators included in the survey be transformed into dummy variables. Subjective annoyance with aircraft noise, type and length of residence and a person's attitude toward the airport's sense of political responsibility are re-scale into dummy variables. The dichotomized values for each of the variables are: (1) Subjective Annoyance 0 = Not annoyed by aircraft noise 1 = Annoyed by aircraft noise to some degree (2) Type of Residence 0 = Resides in an apartment 1 = Resides in a home (3) Length of Residence 0 = Lived at present address five years or less 1 = Lived at present address six or more years (4) Attitude toward the Airport's Sense of Political Responsibility 0 = Airport has some sense of political responsibility to the surrounding communities 1 = Airport does not have any sense of political responsi bility to the surrounding communities The other two independent variables, SES and ob jective exposure, are included in their original scale form. The range of SES is from -9.60 to 7.72 (z-scores). Objective exposure ranges from 1, low exposure to 3, high exposure and is based on Noise Exposure Forecast levels. An interaction variable based on subjective annoyance and objective exposure, as described earlier, is also included in the analysis. Folitical activity, the dependent vari able, is coded as a dummy variable: 0 = Non-activist, 1 = Activist. Based on their standard errors as shown in Table 4:8, three of the variables are reliable predictors of political activism. The variable measuring the inter action between annoyance with and exposure to aircraft noise is the best single predictor. The other predictors are SES and a person's attitude toward the airport's sense of political responsibility. The variables are correlated in the expected direction. Political activists tend to be annoyed by aircraft noise which is dependent 103 TABLE 4:8 MULTIPLE ACTIVITY REGRESSION EQUATION FOR POLITICAL Variables Beta Weight Coeff./Stand. Error Interaction of Objective Exposure and Subj ective Annoyance .42 .07/.02 Socio-Economic Status (SES) . 24 .03/.01 Attitude toward the Airport .13 .12/.07 Type of Residence .08 .07/.06 Obj ective Exposure - .10 - .06/.06 Subj ective Annoyance - . 07 -.06/.09 Length of Residence - . 02 -.02/.06 FINAL MODEL WITH FIRST THREE PREDICTORS ONLY_ Interaction of Obj. Exp. and Subj. Annoy. . 29 .04/.01 SES . 25 .04/.01 Attitude toward the Airport .15 .14/.06 R2 = .18 F3, 208 = 14.80 SIGNIFICANCE = <.001 104 to a degree upon their location in relation to the noise source, reside in areas of relatively higher socio-economic status and feel the airport lacks a sense of political responsibility to the communities adjacent to it. An important aspect of the model is the influence of the contextual variables, annoyance with and exposure to aircraft noise and attitude toward the airport, on an individual's choice to become politically involved. These variables represent specific factors associated with the noise environment. The data support the argument of Orbell and Uno that political participation is not simply a function of general social and psychological phenomenon like SES, but also is related to how an individual per ceives his surrounding environment. Specifically, they argue that political participation is a problem-solving activity and is directed toward dealing with problems in one's environment. Motivations behind an individual's political activity should partially reflect his relation ship to that environment. While there are general attributes associated with why a person becomes involved in politics at the community level an equally important element of his involvement is the particular stimuli 44 to which he is responding. 105 The findings agree reasonably well with previous research on the correlates of local complaints about jet aircraft noise.45 Social-psychological, attitudinal, demo graphic and physical factors are all important in understanding how people respond to aircraft noise. There is some variance on the relative importance of the pre dictors, but the evidence does support the proposition that how people respond to aircraft noise is a complex process and involves more than simple exposure to the noise itself. Conclusion Political responses of individuals to aircraft noise can be conceptualized as attempts at neighborhood problem-solving. Rather than being acquiescent or moving, which are alternative responses to community problems, a person makes the choice to try and remedy the problem by engaging in political action. Underlying his action is the feeling that if he can maintain or recover the ameni ties that his neighborhood provides, the cost of his political action--time, energy and resources--will be offset by these personal gains. Few people make this choice, however. Even with those who do become politically involved their strategies 106 are often uncoordinated with the actions of other concerned individuals. Some people just call the airport and register a complaint about the noise. Others may make a greater investment and attend a community meeting. In the case of a very small number of individuals, they actually become involved in some continuing capacity. The reasons for a person becoming active are equally diverse. Most express some degree of annoyance with aircraft noise, but almost one-fifth said that the noise did not affect them personally. Other factors related to political activism that may account for their behavior are their attitude toward the airport's sense of political responsibility, their SES or their type or length of residence. A sixth reason may have to do with their location in relation to a flight path or runway. While the actual exposure of a person to the noise source may be high, his behavior may not be based on the impact of the noise on his living habits, but fear of an airplane crash in his neighborhood. But in most cases, there is a characteristic common to the people who have become politically involved-- they want the present level of noise reduced to more tolerable limits. From the more theoretical perspective of the economist, they want to shift the negative 107 spillover costs of aircraft noise from themselves to the producers, the air transportation industry. With the passage of the federal Noise Control Act of 1972 and the operational changes instituted by airports and airlines to reduce aircraft noise, there is evidence that citizen political activity directed at the problem has begun to reap dividends. In the process, the issue itself has changed. The question is no longer whether something will be done about aircraft noise, but whether private or public agencies concerned with noise abatement will implement policies that actually improve the noise environments of communities adjacent to major metro politan airports. To use Edelman's terms, will theoutputs be symbolic or tangible?^ The policy process has moved from a question of inputs to the outputs that the system will produce and what types of impacts they will have. These latter concerns are the focus of the next chapter. 108 FOOTNOTES 1 Peter Bachrach and Morton S. Baratz, Power and Poverty (New York: Oxford University Press, 1970), 43-44. A similar conclusion regarding the decision-making process in several Midwestern cities on air pollution is reached in Matthew A. Crenson, The Unpolitics of Air Pollution (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1071). ^Edward Banfield and James Q. Wilson, City Politics (New York: Vintage, 1963), 84. ^Victor Jones, "Methodology in the Study of Metro politan Areas," in The Study of the Metropolitan Region of Chicago: Objectives and Methodology (Evanston, 111.: Northwestern Political Science Department, 1962), 10. 4Robert G. Smith, Public Authorities, Special Districts and Local Governments (Washington, D. C.: National Association of Counties, 1964). ^Theodore J. Lowi, The End of Liberalism (New York: Norton, 1969), 55-100. ^Robert Goodman, "Airport Noise and the Changing Patterns of Airport-Community Politics," working paper of the Center for Urban Affairs, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, February 1973, 38. ^Michael Parenti, "Power and Pluralism: A View From the Bottom," Journal of Politics 32 (August 1970):528. ^John M. Orbell and Toru Uno, "A Theory of Neigh borhood Problem-Solving: Political Action vs. Residential Mobility," American Political Science Review 65 (June 1972):47 5. 9Ibid. ■^Robert L. Lineberry, "Approaches to the Study of Community Politics," in Community Politics: A Behavioral Approach, ed., Charles Bonjean (New York: Free Press, 1971), 16-25. ^Nathan Hare, "Black Ecology," The Black Scholar 1 (April 1970):2-8. 109 1 7 The questionnaire was written by Dr. Robert Goodman and Dr. Robert Warren of the Center for Urban Affairs, University of Southern California. The sampling design is the responsibility of the present author and any shortcomings in this analysis are his responsibility. 1 3 A useful introductory discussion of telephone surveys in comparison to personal and mail surveys is found in E. Terrence Jones, Conducting Political Research (New York: Harper and Row, 1971), 67-79. •^The average completion rate for a personal survey is 70-90 percent, telephone survey 50-80 percent and less than 50 percent for mail surveys. l^The sampling procedure is two-stage. Pages in the telephone directory were first selected according to a table of random numbers, then one listing per page was selected randomly. l^This procedure is suggested by Jones, 66. 1 7 For a discussion of problems when lists are used in probability sampling see Hubert M. Blalock, Social Statistics (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1960), 393-396. ■^Case weights were applied by a procedure found in Norman Nie, Dale H. Bent and C. Hadlai Hull, Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1970)T 79-81. l^The actual population estimates are: Inglewood, 90,900; El Segundo, 15,600; Lennox, 18,500; Westchester, 34,200; Emerson Manor, 3,500; West Westchester, 11,300. Figures were obtained from local municipal agencies. 20ln a cross-national probability sample, 28 per cent stated that they had at one time or another tried to influence their local government. This figure is the base for this estimate. Gabriel Almond and Sidney Verba, The Civic Culture (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1965), ivr.----------- Z1Blalock, 411. 110 2 2 A more complete discussion of these problems can be found in Leslie Kish, Survey Sampling (New York: Wiley, 1965). 23 The contour is taken from Dwight E. Bishop and Richard D. Horonjeff, 1965, 1970 and 1975 Noise Exposure Forecast Areas for Los Angeles International Airport (Los Angeles! Bolt, Beranek and Newman L1967J). 24 Almond and Verba, 144. 2 ^ Robert Alford and Harry M. Scoble, "Sources of Local Political Involvement," American Political Science Review 62 (December 1968):1192-1206. ^^Paul N. Borsky, "The Use of Surveys for Measuring Community Responses to Noise Environments," in Transporta tion Noises, ed., James D. Chalupnik (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1970), 220-221. 27 Aubrey C. McKennel, "Noise Complaints and Community Action" in Transportation Noise, ed., James D. Chalupnik (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1970), 228-238, o o This suggestion was made by Randall L.Hurlbert, Environmental Standards Supervisor, Environmental Standards Division, Inglewood, Calif. ^D. M. Zamarin, L. E. Langdon and R. F. Gabriel, A Summary of Two Community Survey on the Effect of Aircraft Noise (Los Angeles: Douglas Aircraft Corporation (1971J), 8 . 30Nie et al., 201. 31 McKennell, 240 and National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Community Reaction to Airport Noise, vol. 1, by Tracor, Inc., NASA CR-1761 (Washington, D. C.: National Technical Information Service, 1971), 68-69. 32 Clifford Bragdon, Noise Pollution: The Unquiet Crisis (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1970), 160-161 and Zamarin, et al., 43-48, 102-106. Ill Paul T. McClure, Indicators of the Effect of Jet Noise on the Value of Real Estate (Santa Monica, Calif.: Rand Corporation, L1969J)• 34 Peter Orleans, "Urban Experimentation and Urban Sociology," in Science, Engineering and the City, National Academy of Sciences and National Academy of Engineering (Washington, C. C.: National Academy of Sciences, 1967), 103-117. •^Arvin W. Murch, "Public Concern for Environmental Pollution," Public Opinion Quarterly 35 (Spring 1971) : 102-104. ^Douglas h. K. Lee, "Attitude Response to Environ mental Stress," Journal of Social Issues 22 (Winter 1966): 86. •^"Downgrading the Authorities," The American City 71 (November 1956):5. ■^Robert Lineberry and Ira Sharkansky, Urban Politics and Public Policy (New York: Harper and Row, 1971' ) " , 13^ 139' . 39Borsky, 220-221. 4^A comprehensive review of the literature on factors related to political activity is Lester Milbraith, Political Participation (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1965). 4-*-For a discussion of the relationship between education and political efficacy see Angus Campbell et al., The American Voter (New York: Wiley, 1970), 253-254. 4^W. S. Robinson, "Ecological Correlation and the Behavior of Individuals," American Sociological Review 15 (June 1950):351-356. 43McKennell, 240 and National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Community Reaction to Airport Noise, vol. 1, 24-28. 440rbell and Uno, 475-476. 112 45McKennell, 238-242 and National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Community Reaction to Airport Noise, vol. 1, 68-73. ^Murray Edelman, The Symbolic Uses of Politics (Urbana, 111.: University of Illinois Press, 1970), 22-43 CHAPTER V PUBLIC RESPONSES TO AIRCRAFT NOISE ABATEMENT POLICIES In Chapter IV, factors underlying a person's choice to become politically active in relation to the aircraft noise problem were discussed. The best predictor of whether an individual participates or not was found to be his exposure to and annoyance with aircraft noise. For a large number of the politically involved, then, reduction of the present noise level was the goal they hoped to achieve by their political action. Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) in co operation with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has implemented two noise abatement policies which can be conceptualized as responses to the political pressures generated by this citizen political activity. The purpose of this chapter is to assess how effective these policies have been in terms of the favorability of public response to them. The data is taken from two surveys conducted in the communities included in the general sample: Westchester, West Westchester, Emerson Manor, Inglewood, Lennox, and El Segundo. 113 114 Outputs, Outcomes and Feedback The two aircraft noise abatement policies represent outputs from the air transportation policy system which includes both public and private agencies: LAX, the FAA and commercial airline carriers. But a consensus among these actors concerning the suitability and effectiveness of a noise abatement policy provides no guarantee that persons residing in communities impacted by aircraft noise abatement policy provides no guarantee that persons re siding in communities impacted by aircraft noise will view this policy favorably. Any policy output can have numerous outcomes. Often the reasons for the success or failure of a particular policy were not even considered when the policy was initial ly formulated. Variables which seemed quite extraneous at the outset may in the end be the determining factors. Daniel Moynihan describes a similar problem in the formu lation of community action policy during the Johnson Administration: The essential problem with community action was that the one term concealed at least four quite distinct meanings: organizing the power structure, as in the Ford Foundation programs of Paul Ylvisaker; expanding the power structure, as in the delin quency program of Cloward and Ohlin; confronting the power structure, as in the Industrial Areas Foundation program of Saul Alinsky; and finally, assisting the power structure, as in the Peace 115 Corps of Sargent Shriver. The task of the government, in this case of the President's advisors, was first to discern these four different meanings to make sure they were understood by those who had to make decisions about them, and to keep all concerned alert to the dangers of not keeping the distinctions clearly enough in mind. Which is not to say that policy had to choose between various approaches: government no less than life if suffused with ambiguities and internal contra dictions. But to be surmounted they must be perceived. And there were no warnings.^ The analysis in Chapter IV indicated that the moti vation behind a person becoming politically active in the aircraft noise controversy is quite complex and involves physical, socio-psychological, attitudinal and socio economic factors. It may be that the same complexity will describe how people react to noise abatement policies. If how an individual reacts to aircraft noise was solely a function of his exposure to it, then a given reduction in the noise level could be expected to produce a corresponding reduction in the annoyance it produces and perhaps in the amount of political action directed at the problem. But if the previous analysis is any indication of what responses to noise abatement will be, then this statement is much too simplified a description of the probable public reactions. 116 Policy outcomes, not outputs, determine the nature of feedbacks into a policy system. If aircraft noise is a low salience issue to most residents, it may suffice for the airport to adopt noise abatement policies which result in marginal reductions in noise levels, but indicate to residents that at attempt is being made to solve the prob lem. The importance of an airport being perceived as responsive to public concern about aircraft noise has been described by Paul Borsky: If a person feels that those creating the noise care about his welfare and are doing what they can, he is usually more tolerant of the noise and is willing and able to accomodate higher levels of noise. If he feels, however, that the noise propagators are callously ignoring his needs and con cerns, he is usually more likely to be hostile to the noise and more annoyed with even lower levels of noise. But if aircraft noise is a high salience issue to local residents, this type of response by airport officials may be viewed as only symbolic and not really resulting in any tangible improvement of the noise environment. This type of action may, in fact, result in higher levels of citizen political activity with the motivation being the feeling that the airport is only trying to appease local interests and not really committed to an actual solution to the problem. 117 Issue salience is, therefore, an important com ponent of public response to policies and consequently, a major determinant of policy outcomes and feedbacks. Murray Edelman argues in his seminal work, The Symbolic Uses of Politics that: ...where public understanding is vague and information rare, interests in re assurance will be all the more potent and all the more susceptible to manipu lation by political symbols. David Easton makes a similar point in a discussion of system approaches to the study of politics: ...if outputs are to have any impact on support, in oneway or another way they must be able to meet the existing or anticipated demands of the members of a system. They will do this by modifying environmental or intrasystem conditions so that the original circumstances that gave rise to the demands no longer exist, or they may take steps to create this impression in the minds of the members, even though in fact nothing other than the image has been changed.5 The next stage of policy development in the air craft noise policy system will depend upon the impact of noise abatement policies on those segments of the popu lation most affected by aircraft noise. Their reaction will determine the type of demands that will be placed on the system in the future and will depend to some degree on the factors discussed above--how salient is the problem 118 of aircraft noise to residents in noise-impacted areas and whether noise abatement policies are perceived as symbolic or tangible responses to the problem. In the following analyses of citizen reaction to aircraft noise abatement policies, the emphasis will be on specifying the factors related to a person's response. As the above discussion of outputs, outcomes and feedback indicates, an accurate assessment of this aspect of the policy process involves not only measuring the response of the target population, but understanding the factors responsible for a particular type of response. At a different level, this type of analysis can indicate the importance of broadening the decision agenda on the environment. Anticipating the impact of an environ mental policy depends upon an awareness of both technical and social dimensions of that environment. Any cost- benefit analysis associated with environmental policy making should include both types of variables. On the problem of anticipating policy impacts and the type of data needed, Raymond Bauer argues: The word anticipation of the future has been used deliberately in lieu of the more popular term prediction. This is because of an attempt to avoid certain prevailing errors in thinking about the future as a guide to action. For example, prediction ordinarily is thought of as identifying that future state of affairs 119 which is considered to be the most probable of all the conceivable outcomes. However, a program of action must contemplate more possible states of affairs than solely that one which appears to be the most probable. It must take into consideration a whole range of events which are reasonably pro bable and reasonably important.... For many of the important topics on which social critics blithely pass 3udgement, and on which p~olicies are madeV there are no yard sticks by which to know if things are getting better or worse.b~~ The first noise abatement policy that will be considered is a change in operational procedures which was implemented on an experimental basis by Los Angeles Inter national Airport in September, 1972. Questions regarding this procedure change were included in the general sample questionnaire described in Chapter IV. The second policy that will be analyzed involved the purchasing of homes by Los Angeles International Airport in an area north of the airport. Aircraft noise was not originally a major problem in this area, but airport expansion resulted in the con struction of runv/ays less than 300 feet from the first row of homes. Interviews were conducted with residents who sold their homes and the specific focus was on their attitude toward the general circumstances surrounding the airport’s purchase of their property. 120 Public Responses to Changes in Aircraft Operational Procedures Implemented to Reduce Community Noise Levels In July, 1972 Los Angeles International Airport announced that an experimental change in landing procedures to reduce aircraft noise levels would be implemented the following September. Aircraft normally approach the air port from the east, over residential areas. The proposed change would re-route aircraft so that approaches would be from the west, over the ocean, between the hours of 11:00 P.M. and 6:00 A.M. and thus avoid direct residential overflights. The decision to implement the procedure change during these house was based on two factors. First, the lower volume of air traffic during these house made such a procedure feasible and secondly, wind conditions during these hours are favorable for over-ocean approaches. This decision represented a significant concession by LAX to local community concerns about aircraft noise. Procedure changes of this type had been advocated by various individuals and community groups for over ten years, but had always been rejected by LAX and the FAA for safety reasons. For example, in a document entitled The Ten Point Action Program for the Alleviation of Noise Pollution in Inglewood, California published by the local city government in 1970, noise abatement proposals were 121 made which included runway extensions, approach pattern revisions and increases in glide slopes.^ But eventually the political and economic costs of ignoring citizen concerns over aircraft noise reached the point where "nondecisions" regarding noise abatement be- O came too expensive for LAX to absorb. Just two months before the July announcement of the pending change in operational procedures to reduce the noise level, the Los Angeles City Attorney recommended that the airport be closed within thirty days unless the federal government and the airlines assumed responsibility for suits filed against the airport concerning aircraft noise which, at that time, totalled over $4 billion. There are two different motivations, then,behind the change in landing procedures adopted by LAX. The first reason is that the procedure change was a response to community concerns over aircraft noise and that this would indicate to the communities that the airport was concerned about the problem and was trying to do something about it. The airport hoped this would reduce the level of political pressure being placed on it and that judges might take into consideration the airport's efforts in any future court decisions related to aircraft noise suits. 122 Secondly, the airport felt it no longer should solely bear the legal responsibility for aircraft noise and it should be shared by both the airlines and the federal government. This aspect of the airport's noise abatement strategy became evident when in December, 1972 the Los Angeles Board of Commissioners announced a five-phase program of noise abatement which included mandatory over ocean approaches between 11:00 P.M. and 6:00 A.M. While the program represented a substantial effort by LAX at noise abatement, airport officials noted that it repre sented a fragmented local solution to a national problem and that its solution depended upon action by the Congress q and the Administration. Survey Findings The question about the change in landing procedures were asked between the July announcement by the airport of the change and its actual implementation in September. Since the procedures were not actually in effect, respon dents were asked if they knew of the proposed changes and to speculate on what reductions in the noise level in their neighborhoods might result. If a respondent did not know of the procedure change, it was described to him and he 123 was then asked about the possible effects it might have on his noise environment. Issue Salience Forty-eight percent (114) of the respondents said they knew of the proposed change in landing procedures. When asked to describe it, however, only 22 percent (25) of the respondents who said they knew about it could give an accurate description of the procedure change. Fifty- eight percent (66) were able to describe it in vague terms while 20 percent (23) either did not actually know or described other noise abatement activities not related to the procedure change. While only 11 percent (25) of the total sample were able to accurately describe the procedure change, the data does indicate that almost one-half of the respondents were aware that the airport was. trying to do something about the noise. This figure is particularly significant since the procedure had not actually been implemented. The issue of aircraft noise is apparently of enough salience to local residents for them to be able to recall something about noise abatement efforts by the airport. If the issue was not salient, it is doubtful they would have initially paid 124 attention to the information nor remembered anything about it at a future date. Lane and Sears make a similar point at a more theoretical level. They see issue salience as a means for an individual to organize his thoughts and behavior with issues of low salience being "crowded out" of one's consciousness.-'-® Issue salience can also be conceptualized from the perspective of selective perception. If a person had to sort out all of the stimuli to which he is exposed, his perceptual process would be wholly overburdened. Choices must be made between what things are important and should be perceived and what things we can afford to ignore. Bruner has described perception as a decision process and a decision about a given stimuli largely determines the mental category in which the stimuli will be placed and what meaning will be attributed to it.^ Apparently, air craft noise is an issue of sufficient salience that a large number of respondents make the "decision" to perceive and catalog stimuli related to the problem although in most cases the cognition is not particularly well-defined. Informational sources The respondents who said they had heard of the announced procedure change were also asked what the source 125 of their information was. Sixty-seven percent (74) said that they had read about it in the newspaper. Only 33 percent (36) mentioned another information source. Twenty percent (22) identified television as their source of information and even fewer, 13 percent (14), said they had first heard about it from a personal source such as a friend or neighbor. Most of the respondents who said the newspaper was their information mentioned local weekly newspapers rather than the major metropolitan newspapers in the Los Angeles area. While the metropolitan newspapers devoted consider able coverage to the noise controversy at Los Angeles International Airport, it received much greater attention from the local community papers. This is the opposite pattern of newspaper coverage from air pollution. Air pollution is a much more diffuse problem in 12 the Los Angeles Basin than aircraft noise. While certain areas are much more affected by air pollution than others, there is not nearly the difference in impact as with air craft noise. For the vast majority of Los Angeles area residents, aircraft noise is not a problem. But for the residents in communities adjacent to jet airports like LAX it can have a major impact on everyday living habits. It follows that media coverage of the two pollution problems 126 would also differ. Air pollution is more a metropolitan than local problem and even in areas where its impact is comparatively severe it is not as disruptive of living habits as aircraft noise so that newspaper coverage tends to be primarily at the metropolitan level. Conversely, aircraft noise being a more localized problem receives greater coverage from local community newspapers. This difference in newspaper coverage also explains the relatively lower percentage of respondents (20 versus 67 percent) who named television as their information source since television coverage in the Los Angeles area is directed at metropolitan not local community audiences. While the issue of aircraft noise is quite salient for the local newspaper it is apparently not as salient an item in everyday conversation if the 13 percent (14) of the respondents who said they first heard about the procedure change from a personal source is any indication of its prominence. There is the possibility that people talk about the subject, but their initial source of information was not personal so that this answer may not be an appro priate indicator of the salience of the issue in this context. Nevertheless, the data does indicate that the major channels of community information are media-based and not personal. This agrees with recent trends in the 127 United States toward the increasing predominance of media over personal sources of political information. Most of the research in this area has been based on national electoral politics, but this data indicates a similar pattern may be developing at the level of local community politics also. Positive and negative externalities associated with the procedure change In terms of evaluation of the procedure change itself, 39 percent (93) feel it will reduce the noise level in their neighborhood. While 50 percent (118) do not think it will make any difference, only 8 percent (19) actually think it will worsen the noise level. Using this as a measure of the policy's impact then, the public response is basically favorable. Responses to the procedure change vary depending upon a person's location in relation to a flight path or runway. A rough locational measure is the city or neigh borhood in which an individual resides. Forty-five percent (53) of the residents in Inglewood and 54 percent (13) in Lennox feel the noise will be reduced. Both of these communities are under the final approach path to LAX so the switching of the approach to over the ocean directly benefits these communities. The benefits of this procedure 128 change to communities parallel to the runways are less obvious and the data indicates there are reservations in these areas about the change. In contrast to Inglewood and Lennox residents, only 31 percent (27) of the residents in these areas feel the noise level will be improved. The data is presented in Table 5:1. This is a problem with noise abatement policies which are based on changes in operational procedures. They do not actually reduce the noise at the source, the engine, but redistribute it. In some cases, this may totally alleviate the problem, but it may also just shift the costs of aircraft noise away from one group of residents to another. The data indicates that this is a fear of some residents who reside in neighborhoods which are parallel to the runways. This concern is justified, particularly for resi dents who live near the ocean. When the normal easterly approach is used, they are subject to only noise emissions from jets which are taking off. But when the approach is from the ocean, they are exposed to noise both from take offs and landings. As an issue of airport policy-planning, this type of problem poses a major dilemma. If the airport imple ments the procedure on the utilitarian criterion of the 129 TABLE 5:1 ATTITUDE TOWARD THE PROPOSED CHANGE IN LANDING PROCEDURES BY COMMUNITY OF RESIDENCE Attitude toward the Proposed Change in Landing Procedures Improvement in Noise Level No Change Worsen TOTAL Community of Residence Inglewood 53 (45%) 65(54%) H 1%) 120(100%) Lennox 13(54%) 11(46%) 0( 0%) 24 (100%) El Segundo 6(29%) 8 (39%) 7(32%) 20(100%) Westchester 19(39%) 25(52%) 4 ( 9%) 48(100%) Emerson Manor- West Westchester 2(12%) 10(51%) 7 (37%) 19(100%) TOTAL 93(40%) 118(51%) 19 ( 8%) 231(100%) SIGNIFICANCE = .0000 (chi Square) LAMDA ASYMMETRIC = .02 with Attitude Toward the Proposed Change in Landing Procedures as dependent variable Errors in percentages and marginal totals due to rounding or weighting. 130 "greatest good for the greatest number," then there are sound reasons for its adoption. The combined population of Inglewood and Lennox, the two communities which benefit most from the change, is 109,400. In comparison, the population of the communities parallel to the runways-- El Segundo, Westchester and the two neighborhoods within Westchester, West Westchester and Emerson Manor--is 64,600. But even given this rationale, there still is the problem of externalities although the number of people affected is less. The airport seemed to realize this drawback to this method of noise abatement when, in the announcement of the permanent implementation of the procedure change along with four other abatement programs in December, 1972, it said that these efforts only represented a fragmented local solution to a national problem which should be the responsibility of the federal government. The problem of the Airport's perceived lack of political responsibility While there may be negative externalities associa ted with this type of noise abatement policy, it does indicate to the local resident that the airport is trying to do something about the noise and this may serve to alleviate his anxiety and frustration stemming from the 131 problem as Borsky has suggested. in this sense, the out put is as much symbolic as tangible. This is also significant since an important component of the political activity directed at the noise problem is the feeling that the airport lacks a sense of political responsibility to the surrounding communities. The importance of this attitude is markedly evident in relation to how political activists evaluate the pro posed procedure change. Table 5:2 indicates that one favorable outcome of the policy from the perspective of the airport is that political activists, who can be con ceptualized as an attentive public, view the change more favorably than the general public. Fifty-seven percent (27) of the activists compared to 36 percent (66) of the non-activists feel the noise level will be reduced because of the change in procedures. The favorable response of the activists is important because as Edelman argues, the interests of those individuals who are particularly con cerned with a certain policy are less easily met than the interests of the average citizen who has only a peripheral concern with the policy. For the concerned person, symbol ic outputs tend to prove less than satisfactory whereas they often suffice for the general public."^ 132 TABLE 5:2 ATTITUDE TOWARD THE PROPOSED CHANGE IN LANDING PROCEDURES BY POLITICAL ACTIVITY Attitude toward the Proposed Change in Landing Procedures Improvement in Noise Level No Change Worsen TOTAL Political Activity Yes 27 (56%) 17(34%) 5(11%) 49(100%) No 66(36%) 102(56%) 14 ( 8%) 182(100%) TOTAL 93(40%) 118(51%) 19( 8%) 231(100%) SIGNIFICANCE = .02 (Chi Square) TAU C = .11 Errors in percentages and marginal totals due to rounding or weighting. 133 But the relationship is conditional and depends upon a person’s attitude toward the airport's sense of political responsibility. While the original tau c between political activity and the procedure change is .11 it varies from .33 to -.01 for different values of the control variable: (1) Airport has a strong sense of responsibility to the surrounding communities = .33 (2) Airport has a moderate sense of responsibility to the surrounding communities = .12 (3) Airport has no sense of responsi bility to the surrounding communities = -.01 A similar relationship exists between subjective annoyance with aircraft noise and the procedure change. Table 5:3 indicates that the procedure change impacts favorably upon another group of residents whom the airport hoped it would--those who are annoyed by aircraft noise. Of the residents who express some degree of annoyance, 43 percent (69) feel that the noise will be reduced whereas only 13 percent (17) think it will get worse. But also like the relationship between political activity and the procedure change, the relationship is conditional upon an individual's attitude toward the 134 TABLE 5:3 ATTITUDE TOWARD THE PROPOSED CHANGE IN LANDING PROCEDURES BY SUBJECTIVE ANNOYANCE WITH AIR CRAFT NOISE Attitude toward the Proposed Change in Landing Procedures Improvement in Noise Level No Change Worsen TOTAL Subj ective Annoyance with Air craft Noise No Effect 24(26%) 68(72%) 2 ( 3%) 95(100%) Frequently Annoying 34(43%) 34(43%) 11(14%) 79(100%) Seriously Interfering or Intolerable 35(61%) 16(29%) 6(10%) 57(100%) TOTAL 93(40%) 118(51%) 19 ( 8%) 239(100%) SIGNIFICANCE = .0000 (Chi Square) TAU C = -.17 Errors in percentages and marginal totals due to rounding or weighting errors. 135 airport’s sense of political responsibility (original tau c = - .17): (1) Airport has a strong sense of responsibility to the surrounding communities = -.20 (2) Airport has a moderate sense of responsibility to the surrounding communities = -.26 (3) Airport has no sense of responsi bility to the surrounding communities = .10 The intervening effect of this attitude can be conceptualized in terms of selective perception. The air port's long reluctance to do anything about the noise, i.e., its "nondecision" stance, may have resulted in some persons developing considerable hostility toward it. In this particular case, it may have manifested itself as a dis inclination to believe in the sincerity or efficaciousness of the airport's efforts at noise abatement. Using a conceptual approach developed by Jones and Gerard, the individual has made a pre-decisional choice to exclude any information that may prove dissonant to his existing cognitive structure regarding the airport.^ Brehm and Cohen building on Festinger's theory of cognitive dissonance offer a similar, but conceptually different interpretation. Cognitions can have different degrees of consonance. The individual's belief that the airport is 136 irresponsible is only mildly dissonant with the fact that the airport has taken a step to remedy the noise problem. While the cognitions are obviously related, he does not consider the latter to be a contradiction to his original 1 7 attitude to the airport. Attitude change Perhaps the most important question that can be asked about the announcement of the change in landing procedures is whether it changed the attitude of any of the residents in the communities toward the airport. This question was included in the survey and 27 percent (64) in dicated that their attitude had changed. A notable feature of these responses is that they indicate that the policy has as much a symbolic as a tangible dimension. Table 5:4 shows that 52 percent (32) of the respondents who reported a change in attitude did not think the procedure change would have any effect on the noise level in their neigh borhood so that the question of whether the policy affected them or not was a factor in their change of attitude. The fact that the airport had made an attempt to reduce the noise was sufficient to bring about a change in attitude. Conversely, 46 percent (29) of the persons who changed their attitude think the procedure will improve 137 TABLE 5:4 ATTITUDE CHANGE DUE TO ANNOUNCEMENT OF PROCEDURE CHANGE BY ATTITUDE TOWARD THE PROPOSED CHANGE IN LANDING PROCEDURES Attitude Change Due to Announce ment of Procedure Change Yes No TOTAL Attitude toward the Proposed Change in Landing Procedures Improvement Noise Level in 29(46%) 58 (36%) 87(39%) No Change 32 (52%) 84(52%) 116(52%) Worsen 1( 2%) 18(11%) 19 ( 9%) TOTAL 62(100%) 160(100%) 222(100%) SIGNIFICANCE = .06 (Chi Square) TAU C = .12 Errors in percentages and marginal totals due to rounding or weighting. 138 the noise problem. Also, political activists, the more difficult segment of the population to please according to Edelman, are as likely to undergo attitude change as the 18 general public (25 vs. 28 percent). Assuming that political activists have incurred the personal costs associated with their involvement for a reason, presumably getting something done about the noise and that persons evaluating the procedure favorably are receiving a benefit, a quieter environment, then tangible factors have also played a role in attitude change. While approximately one-fourth of the residents indicate their attitude toward the airport has changed, there is no guarantee that at some future date they will not revert back to their prior attitude. Festinger argues that for opinion change and any subsequent behavioral change to be maintained for any duration there must be a supporting environmental change which is conducive to the maintenance of the new attitude or behavior. Otherwise, factors which produced the original attitude will reassert 19 themselves. For some of the residents the actual change in the noise level may provide the necessary support for their new attitude. For others the fact that the airport is trying to do something about the noise may be a sufficient 139 environmental support. But needs are relative. In time, as the J-curve hypothesis postulates, expected need satisfaction may surpass actual need satisfaction as people adjust to the new noise environment and role of the air- 2 0 port. In other words, demands for noise abatement may again be asserted with the basis of a person's appraisal of his environment being not what the airport has done but what it could do. Summary The data indicates that some of the outcomes asso ciated with the proposed procedure change are favorable from the policy perspective of the airport. Over one-third of the residents interviewed feel that the noise level in their neighborhood will be reduced. Of particular impor tance in terms of future demands that may be placed on the system for noise abatement (assuming expectations remain constant), both political activists and persons annoyed by the noise, attentive publics, are more likely to evaluate the change more favorably than the general public. Also, more than one-fourth of the residents say they have a more favorable attitude toward the airport because of the announcement. I 140 But the airport's long reluctance to take noise abatement steps and the locational constraints inherent in abatement policies based on operational changes reduce the positive benefits that accrue from the policy. People who feel the airport was irresponsible in adopting its original "nondecision" position on aircraft noise tend to view any thing the airport does with skepticism and consequently, evaluate the policy negatively. The procedure change while considerably reducing the noise level in communities under the final approach path may actually result in higher noise levels being produced in communities parallel to the runways. In this sense, it only redistributes the cost of aircraft noise. The policy has both costs and benefits associated with it. There is no easy way to weigh the relative value of each and it may remain for the political process, as Ralph Turvey has suggested, to determine the most equitable 21 distribution of costs and benefits. 141 Homeowner Responses to Airport Purchases ~ of Residential Property The problem of compatible land-use has been an issue associated with aircraft noise at Los Angeles Inter national Airport since the early 1960's. Initially, only the southern runways were used for jet aircraft. There was another runway on the northern side of the airport which was operational, but use was restricted to propeller air craft. Increased jet air traffic resulted, however, in the runway being opened to jets in 1962 when the southern run ways were closed for maintenance or weather conditions. The significance of the opening of this runway to jets was to expose a major portion of Inglewood and all of Westchester to jet noise for the first time. This re ignited the noise controversy at LAX. Persons living under the southern approaches or parallel to these runways had been exposed to jet noise since 1959. By 1962, they had either adjusted to the noise to some degree, become involved in political activities designed to pressure the airport into doing something about the noise and while not accomodating themselves to the noise were at least willing to bear the costs of aircraft noise for some possible future benefits resulting from their action or if able, moved. But for people under the new northerly jet approach, it might as well have been 1959, the year regular 142 jet passenger service began. Most of the residents while aware they were living in close proximity to an airport did not expect jet noise to become a problem because, whether they should have assumed this is not the issue, jets only used the southern runways. That is, the airport by opening the northern runway to jets violated a tacit "rule of the game." Another way to look at this is in terms of an airport policy strategy. It would have been far better from the airport's perspective to have used both of the runways for jet aircraft initially so that the expectation in the communities would not have developed that some runways are for jets, other ones for propeller planes. When the northern runway was opened to jet air traffic, FAA regulations required that homes at both ends of the runway had to be condemned and removed for safety reasons. This was the first instance of the purchase of property by the airport because of jet aircraft. The problem of compatible land-use became even more pressing when in 1970, the airport constructed a second north run way less than 300 feet from the first row of homes in Westchester. It was built to accomodate the new jumbo jets like the Boeing 747 since none of the present runways could handle the larger jets. 143 But the issue is not whether the present facilities of the airport were adequate nor that safety factors dictated that the action be taken. Instead, the issue is that the airport in its expansion activities did not anti cipate nor care what the negative spillover effects of expansion might be on local residents. There were no attempts to forecast what policy outcomes might result and airport officials did not feel that they were or should be politically accountable for their actions. Westchester, unlike Inglewood (an incorporated city) is part of the city of Los Angeles and LAX, while through its public authority status is quasi-independent, is still a department within the Los Angeles city government. The residents of Westchester, as citizens of Los Angeles, have a representational strategy not open to Inglewood residents. They can and did pressure the Mayor and City Council for a remedy to the problem. This strategy was apparently successful for in August, 1970, the airport announced a home purchasing pro gram and agreed to buy property within 700 feet of the newly constructed north runway. Seven hundreed feet was chosen as the boundary line by the airport because it re established the distance between the original north runway and the first row of homes. In this response which is 144 reminiscent of the feelings of the residents who thought that the airport had violated the "rules of the game" by allowing jets to use the original north runway, the airport hoped to reinstate the boundary rules by which the game, after 1962, was played. An important feature of the home purchasing policy was that property was not condemned so that whether a person sold his home was voluntary. But as more and more homes were sold and immediately removed from the premises and relocated in another part of the city, the fact that the neighborhood was literally "disappearing" became a moti vation in itself for the homeowner to sell even if he had not originally intended to do so. By January, 1973 the airport had spent over $50 million to purchase property because of north runway operations and construction. While this can be construed as an attempt at compatible land-use, the airport's expansion and purchasing actions did not reflect a consider ation of the social and economic costs to the local residents. The following analysis is an attempt to assess some of these costs. It is based on interviews with residents who sold their property to the airport because 145 of either condemnation due to their location to the second north runway or being within the 700 foot purchasing boundary designated by the airport. Survey Design and Findings In September and October, 1972 a sample survey of homeowners whose property had been purchased by the airport between 1968 and 1972 was conducted. Questions focused on the impact of aircraft noise upon their living habits before they moved, the circumstances surrounding the airport’s purchase of their home, both economic and personal and any political activity in regard to the noise in which they may have been engaged.22 The questionnaire appears in Appendix B. We also were concerned with comparisons between this sample and the cross-community sample discussed earlier in this chapter and in Chapter IV. The sampling list was provided by the Relocation Assistance Agency of the City of Los Angeles. The agency is involved in aiding homeowners whose property was pur chased by the airport. They help the homeowner find a new home and assist him in moving. A sample of 50 was drawn from the 783-person list. It is proportionally stratified by community. Thirty respondents are from West Westchester and Emerson Manor, fourteen from Playa Del Rey and six 146 from East Westchester. In the latter two communities, property was condemned because of FAA clear-zone regula tions whereas in West Westchester and Emerson Manor property was purchased according to the 700 Foot Line established by the airport. Economic and social impact of airport expansion The impact of the expansion of LAX because of jet aircraft can be measured in two different ways. First, since jet aircraft noise was not a problem in these areas prior to the opening of the original north runway to jets and the construction of a runway parallel to it, how residents react to the noise can be used as an indicator. Secondly, since the residents either sold their property to the airport because it was condemned or within the 700 Foot Line the airport established, their feelings about the purchase of their property can also be used as an indicator of the effect of airport expansion on homeowners. For the majority of the homeowners, the airport's purchase of their property was a negative experience in 7 X a personal and economic sense. Most of the respondents did not want to move. Seventy-six percent (38) said that if their neighborhood had remained intact, that is, their property either had not been condemned or the airport had 147 not set up the 7 00 foot line, they would not have sold their homes. This is a striking point when you consider that 88 percent (44) were bothered by aircraft noise to some degree. In terms of subjective annoyance with the noise, only 12 percent (6) said it did not bother them in any way. In contrast, 42 percent (99) in the cross-community sample which includes Inglewood, Lennox, El Segundo and West chester said it had no effect. Likewise on a Guttman scale of activities affected by aircraft noise, 22 percent (11) listed five activities as being affected whereas only 9 percent (22) of the cross community sample indicated this. A factor contributing to the greater sensitivity to aircraft noise of the individuals in this sample, besides the high decibel levels experienced there, is that almost one-half were living in the area before the first north runway was opened to jet aircraft in 1962. Forty-seven percent (23) had purchased their homes prior to 1962 and 80 percent (40) had moved into the area before the second runway was constructed. Reinforcing this interpretation is that 88 percent (44) said they were not concerned about the problem of aircraft noise before they moved into their homes. 148 Length of residence has proved to have legal signi ficance in homeowner suits in relation to aircraft noise. In ruling for the plaintiffs in an inverse condemnation suit against LAX, a Los Angeles Superior Court judge granted one of the plaintiffs only $1 in damages compared to $5100 to $103,500 for the other individuals involved in the suit. He concluded that the plaintiff was entitled to only $1 because he lived in the farthest of any of the homeowners from the airport and that he purchased his property in April, 1968, which was after the second of the 24 two north runways was in operation. Since there are a considerable number of respon dents who indicate that they are quite disturbed by jet noise, why did such a large percentage (76 percent) say they would not have moved if their neighborhood had re mained intact? The data indicates that although the noise ranged from frequently annoying to intolerable for 88 percent (44) of the respondents, the discomfort it produced did not outweigh the social and economic costs associated with selling their homes and having to relocate. Only 18 per cent (9) tried to sell prior to the airport's offer. Forty-six percent (23) were not satisfied with this offer and 26 percent (13) of these homeowners appealed the 149 estimates. Of those who appealed, only 39 percent (5) were satisfied with the airport's final offer. This is not unusual, however. Homeowners whose property is condemned and are forced to relocate generally are dissatisfied with the estimate of the value of their property. This has occurred repeatedly in regard to property "taken" for the purpose of urban renewal: ...dislocation caused by the ultimate taking may result in a loss of goodwill and substantial expenses of moving. Compensation for such losses has traditionally been held unrecoverable either on the theory that they do not constitute 'property1 taken or that the measure of damage would be too speculative.25 The situation, as described above, is even more complicated in West Westchester and Emerson Manor since the property was not condemned nor was there a "taking" but the airport proceeded to buy property on an individual and voluntary basis within the 700 Foot Line it established. The policy was to have a house moving firm remove the house from the premise immediately after purchase. Eventually, a large proportion of the purchase area was empty lots. A number of the respondents who had not as yet moved expressed fears that this was an open invitation to van dalism. Removing the homes also increased the noise level in homes adjacent to the purchase area since, in effect, they had served as noise buffers for these other 150 areas. Residents not within the 700 Foot Line faced the prospect, therefore, of being adjacent to airport property which in the future might be used for commercial or industrial purposes and increasing decibel levels. The airport also suffered a "loss of goodwill" as Sogg and Wertheimer observed in urban renewal controversies. Forty-four percent (22) think the airport management does not have any sense of responsibility to the surrounding communities. This compares to only 19 percent (46) having a similar attitude in the cross-community sample. Public vs. private goods and collective action While the airport eventually purchased almost all of the homes in the areas condemned because of FAA safety regulations and within the 7 00 Foot Line it established, many homeowners chose not to passively accept this encroach ment upon their neighborhoods. The most common form of response was to join a homeowner organization. Fifty-two percent (26) reported being a member of such a group. The homeowner groups had a number of different strategies and goals. In the areas where the property was condemned, some groups sought injunctions prohibiting the use of the northern runways for jet aircraft operations and thus their goal was to preserve the community. Other 151 groups felt that eventually the airport would have its way, so they attempted to capitalize on the situation by main taining ownership of their property, but trying to secure a zoning change so that the land could be used for commer cial or industrial purposes. Alternatively, some groups tried appeals to political actors outside the air transport policy subsystem, particularly the Los Angeles City Council, to try and stop the expansion of the airport or receive a more equitable settlement for their property. The various motivations behind a person joining a homeowner group can be seen in a number of the relationships between variables included in the survey. Table 5:5 indi cates that membership in a homeowner group is related to a person's satisfaction with the airport's offer for his home, i.e., an economic factor. But if this is an indicator of the success of the groups in securing a better price for the property affected by the airport's expansion, then they were not very successful since only 38 percent (9) of the members were satisfied with the airport's offer. Also, a reason why group members are more likely to view the airport's offer more negatively than non-members is that the group climate of militancey may have tended to unrealistically raise the expectations of the membership about the prospects for success. 152 TABLE 5:5 SATISFACTION WITH AIRPORT OFFER FOR HOME BY MEMBERSHIP IN HOMEOWNER GROUP Satisfaction with Airport Offer for Home Membership in a Home owner Group Yes No TOTAL Yes 9(38%) 15(63%) 24(100%) No 16(67%) 8(33%) 24(100%) TOTAL 25 (52%) 23(48%) 48 (100%) SIGNIFICANCE = .08 (Chi Square) PHI = -.25 Errors in percentages and marginal totals due to rounding or weighting errors. 153 A second variable related to membership in a home owner group is whether a person thinks the airport is aware of the problems it creates for the homeowners in communi ties adjacent to the airport, i.e., a psychological factor. Eighty-four percent (21) of the group members feel the air port is not cognizant of these problems compared to 59 percent (13) of the non-members. See Table 5:6, This relationship indicates an additional reason, besides economic, why a person would join a homeowner organization. Most of the theories generated in the social sciences about reasons for collective action emphasize the increased utility of group over individual action to attain a particular benefit which reflects the common interests of the members. Festinger argues, for example, that "the attraction of group membership is not so much in sheer belonging, but in attaining something by means of this m e m b e r s h i p."26 The correlation between group membership and satisfaction with the airport's offer for a person's home, although negative, supports this theory of motiva tion. But an equally plausible motivation could be the need to reduce the uncertainty and consequently the anxiety generated by the airport's purchasing activities by asso ciating with others facing the same dilemma. An indicator of this motivating factor could be the question focusing 154 TABLE 5:6 AIRPORT MANAGEMENT UNDERSTANDS THE PROBLEMS IT CREATES FOR THE HOMEOWNER BY MEMBERSHIP IN A HOMEOWNER GROUP Airport Management Problems it Creates owner Understands the for the Home- Membership Homeowner in a Group Yes No TOTAL Yes 4(15%) 21(84%) 25(100%) No 9(41%) 13(59%) 22(100%) TOTAL 13(28%) 34 (72%) 47(100%) SIGNIFICANCE = .12 PHI = -.37 Errors in percentages and marginal totals due to rounding or weighting errors. 155 on the awareness of the airport management about the prob lems the airport creates for homeowners who reside nearby. There is evidence from experimental social psy- . chology to support this interpretation. Schacter in a laboratory study of motivation underlying the need for affiliation found that subjects involved in a simulated study of the effects of electric shocks were more likely to want to wait before their turn with others involved in the experiment if they were given pre-experiment instructions geared to creating a high rather than a low- fear condition.2? One possible interpretation of these findings is that by associating with others a person would have a basis to evaluate the context of the experimental message through comparative appraisal. The anxiety in duced by uncertainty could therefore be reduced by information or social support. A district plan study conducted by the Los Angeles Department of City Planning in 1969 describing the plight of the homeowner also supports this point: Many of the people in the district are con cerned about the ultimate size of the airport. Lack of an official adopted master plan has fostered a feeling of insecurity about the area’s residential future. In the eyes of the residents, the boundaries of the airport have appeared to expand regularly and without re gard to the adjacent residential area for many years. The residents feel that airport 156 officials have consistently ignored the general welfare of nearby residents. They believe that the pattern of encroachment into residential areas may eventually cause the demise of a well-defined and supposedly stable community.28 This interpretation of the motivation underlying group affiliation supports a theory of collective action developed by Mancur Olson which has received considerable attention in recent years.^ Olson theorizes that people do not join a group for the goods it produces through its public activities such as pressure politics since they are generally available to everyone who belongs to that cate gory of people the organization "speaks” for. In the present case, successful homeowner group action would result in all the persons in the affected communities being able to sell their property at a price they felt was satisfactory, which can be conceptualized as a public good, whether they were a member of the group or not. Other examples of public goods are veteran benefits, welfare, civil rights legislation, tax-exempt activities and environmental standards. Numerous organizations have been formed to secure these benefits, but the ability of these groups to sustain their membership support has not only depended upon their success in getting political decision-makers to provide these public goods, but also 157 private goods which accrue to members only. The Sierra Club, for example, which has been a very active environ mental group both at judicial and legislative levels of government, has an extensive number of activities for members ranging from Sunday walks in the park to two-week excursions to many different places in the world. The homeowner organizations in Westchester-Playa Del Rey provide the individual with a number of alternative methods to reduce the anxiety generated by the airport's operations. First, there is simply associating with other people facing a similar problem which engenders a sense of support and understanding. Secondly, options such as con tacting elected political officeholders, class action law suits or attempts at getting property rezoned can be discussed and a strategy chosen which can give the individ ual a feeling of political efficacy in that something is being done about the problem. Through these interactions, social support and feelings of efficacy are provided for the anxious homeowner. In this model, we have two predictors of member ship in a homeowner group: (1) economic--recovering one's investment in his property and (2) psychological-- anxieties generated by the airport's expansion and its home pur chasing policies. The function of homeowner groups can 158 be conceptualized as the satisfaction of these needs. The groups do this through the production of public and private goods, respectively. An important question from an empirical perspective is which of the variables is the best predictor of group membership and do they operate independently of one another? Also, if the psychological factor is the better of the two predictors and functions independently of the economic factor, it can be concluded that Olson's analytic distinction between public and private goods has some empirical justification. This hypothesis can be tested by employing a dummy variable regression model. Membership in a homeowner group is the dependent variable. The variable representing the economic or public good motivation to join a group is the respondent's attitude toward having received a fair price for his property. A person's feeling about whether the airport management realizes the problems it creates for the local homeowner is the psychological or private good moti vation to belong to a homeowner organization. In other words, a local resident joined a homeowner group either (or perhaps for both of these reasons) to protect his investment in his property--which for two-thirds of the members was not perceived as a successful strategy--or to 159 reduce his personal anxiety regarding the future of his neighborhood. The values for the variables are: (1) Membership in a Homeowner Group 0 = No 1 = Yes (2) Satisfaction with Airport Offer for Home Economic or Public Good Motivation 0 = No 1 = Yes (3) Airport Management Understands the Problems it Creates for the Home owner (Psychological or Private Good Motivation) 0 = No 1 = Yes As indicated in the above bivariate correlations, both of the independent variables are negatively correlated with membership in a homeowner group. Table 5:7 indicates that the data does support the hypothesis. The psychological or private good motivation is the better of the predictors of group membership and operates independently of the (economic or public good moti vation.) Thus, while many residents joined a homeowner group as a means to protect the economic investment in their home, a more frequent reason for joining was the need to asso ciate with others facing the similar plight of airport expansion and home purchases. 160 TABLE 5:7 MULTIPLE REGRESSION EQUATION FOR MEMBERSHIP IN HOMEOWNER GROUP Variables Beta Weight Coeff./Stand.Error Satisfaction with -.22 -.21/,15 Airport Offer for Home (Economic or Public Good Motiva tion) Airport Management Understands the -.34 -.38/.17 Problems it Creates for the Homeowner (Psychological or Private Good Moti vation) R2 = .18 F2, 34 = 3.72 SIGNIFICANCE = .05 161 Summary The survey indicates that homeowners who had to re locate because of airport expansion were quite reluctant to move even with the high level of annoyance with jet noise they expressed (88 percent were bothered by it to some degree). When an individual or family relocated, it may have been into an area where jet noise is not a problem and the physical dwelling might have been more attractive and of sounder construction, but a neighborhood environment amounts to more than this. A person may have made many improvements on his home which gave him a sense of personal pride or that over the years, developed many personal friendships in the community. These things are much more difficult, if not impossible, to replace. It is an individual's relationship to his total environment, particularly the personal and social dimen sions that the airport ignored in its expansion. A neighborhood cannot simply be purchased and this is why three-quarters of the homeowners stated they would not have moved if their neighborhood had remained intact. 162 Conclusion In the analysis of the two noise abatement policies adopted by Los Angeles International Airport, the airport’s actual or perceived lack of political responsibility is a major roadblock to a favorable public response to its efforts. Its past "nondecision” stance on noise abatement has resulted in many residents affected by aircraft noise being incredulous regarding the sincerity of its recent attempts at reducing the noise. They "selectively perceive" their noise environment as being unchanged even if, as in the case of the operational change to over-ocean approaches during evening hours, there is an actual reduction in the noise level. The expansion of jet operations to the northern perimeter of the airport is a current example of the air port’s lack of responsibility to the residents who live in the immediate area. While requirements of air safety may have been a legitimate reason to expand operations, another factor, the feelings of local residents about the airport's expansion, should have been taken into account. Air transportation, because of its expanding scope and the problem of aircraft noise, has had many negative spillover effects on residents who live adjacent to major jet airports. It has ceased to be only a technical 163 enterprise as these social and economic costs to these residents have accrued. Public agencies concerned with air transportation, like the public authority and special district airports and the FAA, must now broaden their decision agenda to include not only questions of tech nological feasibility, but also what the effects of these actions will be on people fho live in the proximity of jet airports. 164 FOOTNOTES ^For a description of the relationship between policy outputs and outcomes see Austin Ranney, "The Study of Policy Contents: A Framework for Choice," in Political Science and Public Policy, ed., Austin Ranney (Chicago: Markham, 1968), 3-22. ^Daniel P. Moynihan, Maximum Feasible Misunder standing (New York: Free Press , 1970) , 168. 7 Paul N. Borsky, "The Uses of Surveys for Measuring Community Responses to Noise Environments," in Transporta tion Noises, ed., James D. Chalupnik (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1970), 220-221. ^Murray Edelman, The Symbolic Uses of Politics (Urbana, 111.: University of Illinois Press, 197 0), 38. ^David Easton, A Framework for Political Analysis (Englewood Cliffs, N. J71 Prentice-Hall, 1965), 127'. ^Raymond Bauer, "Detection and Anticipation of Impact: The Nature of the Task," in Social Indicators, ed., Raymond Bauer (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1966), 17, 20. 7 City of Inglewood, California, The Ten-Point Action Program for the Alleviation of Noise Pollution in Inglewood, California, January 1, 1970. g For a discussion of the various aspects of non decisionmaking see Peter Bachrach and Morton S. Baratz, "The Two Faces of Power," American Political Science Review 57 (December 1962):947-952. ^Los Angeles Times, December 21, 1972. -^Robert e . Lane and David 0. Sears, Public Opinion (Englewood Cliffs, N. J.: Prentice-Hall, 1965):127. ■^-J. S. Bruner and Leo Postman, "On the Perception Incongruity: A Paradigm," Journal of Personality 18 (September 1949):206-223. 165 12 For an argument that air pollution is both a localized and metropolitan problem see Lester Goldner, "Air Pollution Control in the Metropolitan Boston Area," in The Economics of Air Pollution, ed., Harold Wolozin (New York: Norton, 1966), 127-159. l^See Dan Nimmo, The Political Persuaders (Engle wood Cliffs, N. J.: Prentice-Hall, 1970), 111-118. -^Borsky, 220-221. •^Edelman, 22-23. ■^Edward E. Jones and Harold B. Gerard, Foundations of Social Psychology (New York: Wiley, 1967), 186-377. 17 J. W. Brehm and A. R. Cohen, Explorations in Cognitive Dissonance (New York: Wiley, 1962). terms of hypothesis testing, the statement that political activists are as likely to change their attitude as non-activists means that the null hypothesis of no significant differences between the groups cannot be rejected (significance level = .82). ■^Leon Festinger, "Behavioral Support for Attitude,"' Public Opinion Quarterly 28 (July 1964):404-417. James C. Davies, "Toward a Theory of Revolution," American Sociological Review 6 (February 1962):5-19. ^Ralph Turvey, "Side Effects of Resource Use," in Environmental Quality in a Growing Economy, ed., Henry Jarrett (Baltimore: John Hopkins Press, 1966), 52. 22 The survey was written by Dr. Robert Goodman an Dr. Robert Warren of the Center for Urban Affairs, Univer sity of Southern California. The interviews and analysis were conducted by the present author and any interpretation in this text is his responsibility. ^For a discussion of some of the social, economic and psychological dimensions of property condemnation see James Q. Wilson, ed. Urban Renewal: The Record and the Controversy (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1966) , 291-380. 166 24 Los Angeles Times, March 28, 1973. 2 5 Wilton S. Sogg and Warren Wertheimer, "Legal and Governmental Issues in Urban Renewal," in Wilson, 154. ^Leon Festinger, "Group Attraction and Membership," in Group Dynamics, eds. Dorwin Cartwright and Alvin Zander (Evanston, 111.: Row and Peterson, 1953), 93. 27S. Schater, The Psychology of Affiliation (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 1959). 2®Los Angeles Department of City Planning, Westchester-Player Del Rey District Plan Study, no. 20345, June 1969, 2^Mancur Olson, The Logic of Collective Action (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971). CHAPTER VI SOME STATISTICAL MODELS OF THE IMPACT OF AIRCRAFT NOISE ON COMMUNITY SOCIO-ECONOMIC STRUCTURE For more than a decade after aircraft noise became a problem in communities adjacent to Los Angeles Inter national Airport, no substantial reductions in the noise level occurred. The only change was that it became progressively worse as the air transportation industry expanded its service to meet the rising demand for air travel. The reluctance of the air transportation, in particular the public sector, to do anything about aircraft noise during this period is an example of a "nondecision." The FAA and LAX did not feel thay had any responsibility for the noise problem and largely ignored community con cerns about the noise. They did make some symbolic policy gestures such as study committees and changes in glide slopes, but no significant noise abatement policies re sulted. It was evident that the industry was going to let the homeowner bear the negative spillover costs of air craft noise. 167 168 By the early 1970's political and legal pressures reached the point where the public sector of the industry was finally forced to take concrete steps to reduce air craft noise. But what impact did aircraft noise have on communities which were exposed to it during the preceding decade? That is, what are some of the outcomes associated with the industry's "nondecision" (this being, in effect, a policy) to do anything about aircraft noise. In this chapter, one type of outcome, community socio-economic transition, will be examined. Hypotheses and Research Design Nathan Hare has argued that aircraft noise may be creating a new type of ghetto by depreciating the market value of residential property. If the impact is severe enough, affected areas may eventually become a market for low-income housing.'*' This type of community change can also reduce the level of public pressure placed on airport officials about the noise. Low-income groups are less likely than higher-income groups to be distressed with aircraft noise and to try and do something politically 2 about it. One consequence of this, according to Demetrius Plessas, is that flight patterns have increasingly been placed over poorer neighborhoods.^ 169 These developments can have an effect similar to the "cycle of poverty" which was conceived by the Council of Economic Advisors in the early 1960’s.^ For an indi vidual in a depressed community, "cultural and environmen tal obstacles to motivation," lead to "poor health, inadequate motivation and low mobility limiting earning potential" which result in "limited income opportunities," and the cycle repeats itself. In an analogous fashion, aircraft noise depresses property values which result in affected areas becoming markets for low-income housing. As an area undergoes change, people move in who show less distress with aircraft noise and are not likely to act politically to reduce it. Airport officials, then, if facing pressure from more affluent areas may shift flight patterns over the already depressed sections of the community or increase the volume of air traffic in the existing corridors over these areas. This may increase the noise level enough to even motivate these persons to move and the property may be further devaluated. This aspect of the aircraft noise problem has generally been overlooked. Economists while considering the negative spillover effects of aircraft noise, have been primarily concerned with how to take these costs and place them back into the production process. This approach 170 assumes that the costs can be expressed in monetary terms. Some economists have questioned whether this adequately measures the impact aircraft noise can have, particularly when it involves social costs which may not be capable of C being measured in quantitative terms. To examine the possible effects aircraft noise can have on the socio-economic structure of a community, a num ber of statistical models have been developed. The study area is the four communities included in the general survey of attitudes toward aircraft noise: Westchester, Inglewood, Lennox and El Segundo. In each of the analyses, aircraft noise is an independent variable. Demographic and socio economic indicators drawn from the 1960 and 1970 Census of Population are the dependent variables. The units of analysis are census tracts and from thirty to thirty-eight are included depending on the particular model. A 1970 Noise Exposure Forecast (NEF) contour for Los Angeles International Airport is used to indicate the exposure level of a census tract.^ The contour is based on a three-point scale: A = suitable for residential dwellings, B = further construction of single-family dwellings should be avoided and C = not appropriate for residential use. The contour overlaid on census tracts for the area appears in Figure 6:1. FIGURE 6:1 1970 NOISE EXPOSURE FORECAST CONTOUR ON 1970 CENSUS TRACTS FOR WESTCHESTER, INGLEWOOD EL SEGUNDO AND LENNOX 171 6023.01 6024.02 6024.01 b b l&KiiJii ?»cn»o* w m»o 173 An NEF level for a census tract was determined by assigning numerical values to each contour (A = 1, B = 2, C = 3], computing the proportion of a tract that fell in a contour and determining an average for the tract as a whole.. A method of weighted averages was used: 1(Proportion 2(Proportion 3)Proportion NEF Level By Tract = of tract in + of tract in + of tract in this contour) this contour) this contour) 3 Two questions will be explored which are related to the hypotheses discussed earlier. First, do areas im pacted by aircraft noise differ in significant respects from lesser impacted portions of the communities in terms of demographic characteristics associated with community transition? The hypotheses previously discussed suggest aircraft noise is a contributing factor. Secondly, looking at the economic impact of aircraft noise, its relationship to property values will be examined. A cross-sectional, econometric model will be used which includes a number of other independent variables. 174 Aircraft Noise and Community Transition The first model is a cross-sectional analysis of the relationship between aircraft noise and community demographic patterns. The dependent variables are taken from the 1970 Census of Population and are factor analyzed to indicate general population patterns or clusters that exist in the communities. The variables were selected from a typology of metropolitan demographic characteristics 7 developed by Doris Holleb. They represent four different sets of demographic factors: social rank, family size, race-ethnicity and mobility-stability. The factors and their respective variables are listed in Table 6:1. According to Holleb, the social rank factor represents social class and economic achievement. The family size factor distinguishes areas of large family residence from sections characterized primarily by resi dents who are single or childless. The race-ethnicity factor indicates the concentration of minority groups and is most often correlated negatively with social rank variables. The last set of variables, mobility-stability indicators, measures the residential stability of an area which may be related to all or some subset of the above variables. 175 Holleb cautions that the factors should be in dependent and not necessarily related in any predictable fashion. For example, an area of low socio-economic status may or may not be residentially unstable. Likewise, predominantly Black sections of a community may be middle class, particularly in the initial stages of a Black migration into a predominantly white community. To get an accurate estimate of the demographic patterns or clusters in the communities adjacent to Los Angeles International Airport, the variables listed in Table 6:1 are used, but not the factors themselves. Rather than imposing a model on the data, a better alternative is to factor analyze the entire set of variables to produce factors relevant to the particular area. This seems a more realistic strategy since there is the possibility that the airport area may not conform to the general metropolitan model developed by Holleb. The correlations between the variables are in Table 6:2. The Noise Exposure Forecast (NEF) level by census tract is also included. It is evident from Table 6:2 that the strength and direction of the correlation between air craft noise and a number of the demographic variables indicates that some conditions related to community tran sition are located in high noise areas. Specifically, the 176 TABLE 6:1 HOLLEB EMPIRICAL TYPOLOGY OF METROPOLITAN DEMOGRAPHIC FACTORS AND SELECTED VARIABLES INCLUDED IN THE PRESENT ANALYSIS 1. SOCIAL RANK a. Percent males over 16 in the work force b. Unemployment rate c. Median family income 2. FAMILY SIZE a. Percent persons 18 years old or under b. Percent persons 65 years or over c. Percent married males d. Percent women over 14 in the labor force 3. RACE-ETHNICITY a. Percent Black b. Percent other races (not including Blacks) 4. MOBILITY-STABILITY a. Vacancy rate b. Percent residing in same house in 1970 as 1965 TABLE 6:2 PEARSON CORRELATIONS BETWEEN 1970 CENSUS VARIABLES AND NOISE EXPOSURE FORECAST LEVELS MLAB UNEM INCO AG18 AG 6 5 MARR WLAB BLAC RACE VANC RES I NEFC MLAB -.25 .11 .51 -.38 .34 .19 -.08 -.33 .18 -. 01 .10 UNEM - .43 -.02 -.16 -.15 .18 -.04 .39 .52 - .31 .12 INCO .14 -.23 .19 -.21 .00 -.62 -.47 .67 - .36 AG18 -.63 . 29 -.29 .17 - .17 - .12 . 38 .16 AG 6 5 .27 - .16 .18 . 06 .06 -.10 -.15 MARR - .33 . 28 - .41 - .21 .46 -.27 WLAB .17 .06 .25 -.59 .28 BLAC .29 -.56 .31 VANG -.54 .47 RES I - .46 177 TABLE 6:2-Continued VARIABLES: MLAB (percent males over 16 in the labor force) UNEM (Unemployment rate) INCO (Median family income) AG18 (Percent persons 18 years or under) AG65 (Percent persons 65 years old or over) MARR (Percent married males) WLAB (Percent women over 14 in the labor force) BLAC (Percent Black) RACE (Percent other races--not including blacks) VANC (Vacancy rate) RESI (Percent residing in same house in 1970 as 1965) NEFC (Noise Exposure Forecast < Contour) 179 correlation between aircraft noise and median family income is -.36, percent other races .31, vacancy rates .47 and percent residing in the same house in 1970 as 1965 -.46. High noise areas have relatively lower incomes, a higher percentage of minority residents, higher vacancy rates and and are more residentially unstable than lesser noise- impacted parts of the communities. However, these bivariate relationships do not indicate whether these characteristics of community transition are geographically clustered thus representing a distinct areal pattern. If aircraft noise does have a significant impact on demo graphic patterns the most reasonable expectation would be that they would be interrelated. This is suggested by the hypotheses discussed previously. Aircraft noise depresses property values, the impacted area becomes a market for low-income housing and eventually lower socio-economic groups move into the neighborhood. Such an area could also be characterized by relatively high vacancy rates and a lesser number of residents who have lived in the neighborhood for an extended period of time than in parts of the community where aircraft noise is not a problem. While property values is not included in the analysis, Holleb argues that it is more a housing than a demographic characteristic; income can serve as a surrogate measure 180 as a .85 correlation between the two variables indi cated. Therefore, there are two reasons why the data should be factor analyzed. The first is that Holleb’s factors are based on data for metropolitan areas through out the United Staets which may or mau not be relevant to the particular communities adjacent to Los Angeles International Airport. Secondly, if aircraft noise has had a measurable effect on community transition the variables it correlates with in the expected direction should be interrelated as well as geographically clustered. The method of factoring that is used is a principal- component solution with no iterations. The factors that are extracted are exact mathematical transformations of the original variables. The advantage of this method is that no assumptions about the structure of the variables g are required. The method of rotation is Varimax, which is orthogonal. In Table 6:3 the unrotated factor matrix and the orthogonally rotated matrix are presented. The data supports the hypothesis that characteristics of community transition should be clustered if a significant pattern exists. The first unrotated factor represents the most comprehensive pattern the data fits. It represents TABLE 6:3 FACTOR MATRICES Unrotated Factors (Principal component, no iterations) Variables 1 2 3 4 5 h^ 1. MLAB .30 -.73 .36 .16 - .38 .92 {% males over 16 in labor force) 2. UNEM - .57 - . 24 -.05 - .46 .16 .62 (Unemployment rate) 3. INCO .77 .04 -.26 .33 . 03 .77 (Median family income) 4. AG 18 .48 - .68 .03 -.42 . 24 .92 (^persons 18 years old or under) 5. AG 6 5 -.16 .82 .42 -.08 -.30 .97 (^persons 65 years old or older) 6. MARR . 58 .08 .59 -.37 -.21 .87 (% married males) 7. WLAB -.48 - .31 . 30 .66 .20 .89 (% women over 14 in labor force) 8. BLAC .13 .13 .67 - . 02 .67 .94 (% Black) 9. RACE -.73 . 05 - . 19 - .33 .19 .72 (% other races, not including Blacks) 10. VANC - .64 - .33 .18 -.17 -.43 .76 (Vacancy rate) 11. RES I .87 . 14 - .22 - . 22 .01 .87 (presiding in same house since 1965) % Total Var. 32.0 17.9 12. 5 11.8 9.8 84.0 TABLE 6:3-Continued Orthogonally Rotated Factors (Varimax rotation) 1 2 3 4 5 1. MLAB - .11 . 34 -.16 .87 - . 09 2. UNEM .75 . 20 .01 -.16 .01 3. INCO -.83 . 20 .16 . 00 - . 07 4. AG18 ,00 .79 .36 .34 . 23 5. AG 6 5 .07 -.95 .17 -.03 .17 6. MARR -.16 -.18 .55 .59 .41 7. WLAB .10 .03 - .92 .10 .14 8. BLAC -.04 -.02 -.09 -.00 .96 9. RACE .72 -.02 - .08 - .44 -.07 10. VANC .70 - .10 - .23 .35 - .30 11. RES I - .61 .19 .68 .01 . 05 % TotalVar. 24.5 16.4 17.2 14.3 11.8 183 relatively high income, large percentage of married couples, and children under eighteen and a low number of women in the labor force. The factor is also characterized by a high degree of residential stability. Predictably, un employment and vacancy rates have high negative loadings as well as percent other races. Rummel suggests that a primary function of rotation is to see if a hypothesized cluster of relationships exist 9 between the variables. Unlike the unrotated factor solution it delineates distinct clusters of interrelated variables. The first factor in the rotated solution indicates that there is a pattern in the communities indi cative of transition. The loadings of the significant variables are all above .60 with the highest loading of the remaining variables .16. The pattern is characterized by high unemployment and vacancy rates, residential insta bility, a significant proportion of minorities, but not including Blacks and low income. The other factors are less distinct. Percent persons under eighteen and over 65 load highly on Factor 2, but there are no other demographic characteristics that load highly on this factor. Factor 3 is more interpretable. It is characterized by residential stability, a large per centage of married couples with a relatively low number of 184 working women. Aircraft noise could be expected to correlate negatively with this factor. Like the second factor, Factor 4 is vague. It includes a large percentage of married couples and men in the labor force. The only variable loading high on Factor 5 is per cent Black. While one of the communities, Inglewood, is experiencing an influx of Black residents into its western half, only six tracts have a significant Black population. Since thirty-eight tracts are included in the analysis, six tracts have relatively a slight weight in determining the relationships between the variables and this is perhaps the reason why no other variables load high on this factor. However, in Inglewood, a reasonable hypothesis is that the Black population movement into the city is potentially related to community transition. It also may be more appropriate in Inglewood to conceptualize it as an indepen dent rather than a dependent variable. This latter point is supported by the fact that there is only a .12 correla tion between aircraft noise and percent Black for the Inglewood tracts. Apparently, as factors related to community transition, the variables are largely operating independently of each other. Also, the noise corridors produced by the jets approaching Los Angeles International Airport do not seem to be functioning as corridors for the 185 Black population influx into the city.'*'® If the behavior of the two factors are indeed separate, any attempts by city officials and concerned citizens at stabilizing the community become doubly difficult since changes in the impact of one of the variables would have little effect on the other. To analyze the overall relationship between air craft noise and the demographic factors for all the communities, factor scores were calculated for all the variables with loadings of .50 or more on a single factor See Table 6:3 . Each of the thirty-eight tracts receives a particular score for each of the factors. A high positive score on Factor 1 indicates that a tract has the character istics associated with transition. Conversely a high score on Factor 3 represents residential stability although the factor is not as clearly definable as Factor 1. Aircraft noise as measured by the NEF contour should correlate positively with Factor 1 and negatively with Factor 3. Likewise, Factor 1 should have a negative correlation with Factor 3 since they represent opposite types of demographic patterns. The correlations between the factor scales and aircraft noise are listed in Table 6:4 and they support the hypotheses. Aircraft noise has a .42 correlation with FSCALE1, -.40 with FSCALE3 and the correlation between 186 TABLE 6:4 PEARSON CORRELATIONS BETWEEN FACTOR AND NOISE EXPOSURE FORECAST LEVELS SCALES (NEF) FSCALE1 FSCALE2 FSCALE3 FSCALE4 FSCALE5 NEF FSCALE1 -.13 -.51 -.28 -.09 .42 FSCALE2 .09 .33 -.03 .17 FSCALE3 .32 -.02 - .40 FSCALE4 . 09 - .07 FSCALE5 .04 FACTOR SCORE COEFFICIENTS FOR VARIABLES IN SCALES: FSCALE1 = .35UNEM + .28RACE = .28 VANC - .35INCO - .13RESI FSCALE2 = .43AG18 - .56AG65 FSCALE3 = .29MARR + .30RESI - .58WLAB FSCALE4 = .5 6MLAB + .40MARR FSCALE5 = .78BLAC VARIABLES: MLAB (Percent males over 16 in the labor force) UNEM (Unemployment rate) INCO (Median family income) AG18 (Percent persons 18 years or under) AG65 (Percent persons 65 years or over) MARR (Percent married males) WLAB (Percent women over 14 in labor force) BLAC (Percent Black) RACE (Percent other races, not including Blacks) VANC (Vacancy rate) RESI (Percent residing in same house in 1970 as 1965) NEF (Noise Exposure Forecast level averaged by census tract) 187 FSCALE1 and FSCALE3 is -.51. The greater the level of air craft noise then, the more likely a census tract has the characteristics associated with community transition. In Table 6:5, the factor score coefficients for FSCALE1 and FSCALE3 are plotted for the thirty-eight census tracts. The tracts which score highest on community transition are in the fourth quadrant. They have positive scores on FSCALE1 (community transition) and negative scores on FSCALE3 (neighborhood stability). Seven of the tracts are in Inglewood and one each in Lennox, Westchester and El Segundo. The most stable tracts are located in the second quadrant. Eight of these are in Westchester and six in Inglewood. However, all of the Westchester tracts in this quadrant with the exception of one tract are lower on FSCALE1 than any of the Inglewood tracts. Also, 57 percent of its tracts are in this quadrant compared to only 33 per cent for Inglewood. This suggests that Westchester is the most stable of the communities. The demographic patterns in quadrants 1 and 3 are less clear and since only thirteen of the thirty-eight are located in these quadrants, the major patterns in the communities are represented by quadrants 2 and 4 where the scale scores are consistent, positive on one factor and negative on the other. 188 TABLE 6:5 FACTOR SCORE PLOT FOR CENSUS TRACTS ON FSCALE1 AND FSCALE3 FSCALE3 w w w I w w W I W W I I I I -2.5 -2.0 -1.0 3.0 2.0 1.0 3 I u L L (2 I W W L I 1 1.0 2.0 2.5 W I w I w E E I -1.0 L I 1 T I I I -2.0 W = WESTCHESTER I = INGLEWOOD L = LENNOX W E = El SEGUNDO -3.0 189 One way to visualize the relationship is to look at the axes in Table 6:5 in terms of a 2 x 2 table where cell a = quadrant 2, b = 1, c = 3, and d = 4. Phi for the table is .34 which supports the above point that most of the tracts fall into either the demographic pattern represented by quadrant 2 or 4. Aircraft noise also shows a consistent relationship with the cells. Quadrant 4/cell d should have the highest exposure level and quadrant 2/cell a the lowest with the other categories between these two values. Mean NEF levels for the tracts in each quadrant were computed and the data fits this pattern. The mean NEF level for quadrant 4 is 2.34, for quadrants 1 and 3, the value is 2.19 and for quadrant 2 it is 1.80. The data appears in Table 6:6. The analysis indicates that in the communities adjacent to Los Angeles International Airport, aircraft noise is related to characteristics associated with community transition. The relationship is apparent whether the two major demographic patterns that appear in the communities are analyzed separately as factor scales or jointly as dichotomous categories. While certainly no causal statement can be made about the relationship, parti cularly since no other independent variables were included in the analysis, the strength and consistency of the 190 TABLE 6:6 FSCALE1 (COMMUNITY TRANSITION) BY FSCALE3 (NEIGHBORHOOD STABILITY) FSCALE1 FSCALE3 - 4 * TOTAL + 14 9 (371) (24%) 23 - 4 11 (11%) (29%) 15 TOTAL 18 20 38 (100%) NOTES: (1) Cell and quadrant values: a-2 b-1 c-3 d-4 (2) - and + values for variables represent direction of scale score on factors (3) Cell percentages based on total number of tracts in analysis N = 38 (4) PHI = .34 (5) Mean NEF values by cell: 1.80 2.19 2.19 2.34 191 relationship is suggestive of the possible effects aircraft noise may have on the socio-economic structure of a community. The Problem of Time as a Confounding Influence A limitation with a cross-sectional model of this type is that it does not control for the possibility that the factors associated with community transition were apparent prior to the time aircraft noise became a serious community problem. In time-series analysis, this problem 11 is referred to as autocorrelation. This violates a basic tenet of statistical analysis that the observations in a sample are independent of one another. Longitudinal analysis is analogous to a controlled experiment in the sense that changes in the dependent variable should be due only to manipulation in the values of the independent variable(s), other possible confounding influences being randomized out of the design. But if the value of an observation at a given point in time is to some degree a function of its value at a previous period then a confound ing influence is introduced. The effect can be marked enough to render the original relationship spurious. An experimental example would be the application of differing amounts of water over time to a wheat field without 192 controlling for the progressive depletion of minerals from the soil. The value of a particular observation would depend not only on the amount of water applied, but also on how much depletion the soil had undergone to that date. As this relates to the present analysis, the factors re lated to community transition that are observed in 1970 could simply be an extension of a trend that existed in the communities prior to 1959 when jet noise first became a problem. If this is the case, the 1970 relationship between aircraft noise and community transition would be spurious. To adjust for this problem, it is possible to "detrend" the 197 0 census variables by regressing them on their values for a prior time period, in this case 1960. The residual or unexplained variance would represent 197 0 census values adjusted for any linear effects that could be attributed to a trend present in the communities in 1960. The possibility that any effects due to aircraft noise would also be removed is minimal since at the time of the census regular jet passenger service had only been in operation at Los Angeles International Airport for six months. This procedure is analogous to a part correlation 12 as described by McNemar. A partial correlation 193 coefficient represents the influence of a third variable removed from both the independent and dependent variable. But in the present case, the assumption is that there is no relationship between aircraft noise and 1960 demographic patterns in the communities. The concern is only to con trol for the influence of 1960 patterns on those of 1970. Table 6:7 lists the correlations between the 1960 and 197 0 values for the variables included in FSCALE1, the community transition scale. The number of census tracts have been reduced from thirty-eight to thirty-one because several of the tracts had split from the 1960 to the 1970 censuses. It is evident that in a number of the indicators there have been considerable changes in their values over the ten-year period. 1960 vacancy rates, for example, explain only 25 percent of the variance in the 197 0 values. This does not imply that the vacancy rate has increased, but only that its pattern or distribution has changed signi ficantly. In fact, it actually decreased from .051 to .038. Median family income also provides a similar problem in terms of interpretation. The mean income for all the tracts increased from $8180 to $12,292, but the 1960 data explains 85 percent of the variance in the 1970 data. While income has increased considerably, its rela tive distribution across the tracts has remained quite stable. 194 TABLE 6:7 PEARSON CORRELATIONS BETWEEN 1960 AND 1970 VALUES FOR COMMUNITY TRANSITION VARIABLES UNEM60 UNEM70 VANC70 RACE70 RESI70 INCO70 .37 VANC60 .50 RACE60 .62 RES160 .86 INC060 .92 VARIABLES: UNEM (Unemployment rate) VANC (Vacancy rate) RACE (Percent other races, not including Blacks) RESI (Percent residing in same house for five years) INCO (Median family income) 195 While the distributions of some of the variables have changed markedly over the ten-year period, the cor relations between the variables and aircraft noise is similar to the original correlations with the 197 0 data. See Table 6:8. Predictably, most of the correlations are lower, but this is due to some of the variance in the 197 0 being a function of trends evident in 1960. Aircraft noise, then, is not only cross-sectionally related to variables associated with community transition, but also similarly related to changes that have occurred in their values over the prior ten-year period. In a number of the indicators, most of the variance in their 1970 values is attributable to 1960 trends, but even with these variables aircraft noise has a moderate correlation with the residuals. But most importantly, the analysis indi cates that the 1970 cross-sectional relationship between aircraft noise and community transition is not spurious due to conditions that existed in the communities prior to aircraft noise becoming a serious community problem. Aircraft Noise and Property Values There has been considerable speculation by social scientists, particularly economists, on the impact that aircraft noises, as an externality, can have on the 196 TABLE 6:8 PEARSON CORRELATIONS BETWEEN NOISE EXPOSURE FORECAST LEVELS (NEF) AND COMMUNITY TRANSITION NEF BY RESIDUALS FROM NEF BY ORIGINAL 1970 REGRESSION OF 19 7 0 ON VALUES 1960 VALUES UNEM . 23 .12 VANC .34 .47 RACE .22 .31 RESI -.26 -.46 INCO - .34 - .36 VARIABLES: UNEM (Unemployment rate) VANC (Vacancy rate) RACE (Percent other races, not including Blacks) RESI (Percent residing in same house for five years) INCO (Median family income) NEF (Noise Exposure Forecast level averaged by census tract) 197 13 property values of residences adjacent to airports. Two general conclusions have been drawn. On one hand, land values can increase because of geographic proximity to an airport, but this may require that the land be zoned for 14 commercial purposes. Alternatively, it can depreciate because of the disturbing effects that aircraft noise can have on normal living habits such as conversation and sleeping. Both attitudinal and economic studies have been conducted. In a comparative sample survey of residential areas near seven metropolitan airports in the United States, 51 to 86 percent of the respondents who were interviewed said the value of their property had increased whereas only 4 to 22 percent felt it had declined in value. From 6 to 34 percent in the 7 sampling areas attributed the increase to proximity to the airport. Los Angeles International Airport was included in the survey and it rakned sixth on the first question with 62 percent stating their property had appreciated, and second on whether the respondent felt there had been a decline in the value of his property with 17 percent answering this question affirmatively. More importantly, 34 percent of the Los Angeles respondents said the increase in the value of their property was due to 198 their location in relation to the airport in contrast to only 19 percent in Dallas, the next ranked city.-^ Generally, a smaller proportion of people who re side in communities affected by aircraft noise will feel that their property has diminished in value due to aircraft noise than those who feel it has increased either because of the proximity to an airport or general appreciation of land in the area. In a survey taken in a Philadelphia community where jet flyovers are frequent, 18 percent of the respondents said their property had been devalued because of the noise.^ A Douglas Aircraft Company survey in communities adjacent to Los Angeles International Airport found that 44 percent of the respondents who lived within a mile of the airport felt their property had increased in value over the last five years while 24 percent thought it 17 had decreased. The most comprehensive economic analysis of the possible spillover effects of aircraft noise on property values has been done by Paul T. McClure of the Rand 18 Corporation at Los Angeles International Airport. McClure feels that the effect of jet noise can be measured in two ways: (1) changes in the market value of property it produces and (2) the cost of counter-measures needed to compensate individuals for losses incurred because of it. 199 Taking 90PNdB as the borderline between a tolerable and intolerable noise level for normal living circumstances, he employs a longitudinal, quasi-experimental design to test whether sale prices of homes are affected. Four geographic areas are used. Two are adjacent to the airport and are exposed to 90PNdB or more, another is in the same area, but the noise level is under 90PNdB. The fourth is approximately twenty miles away and has comparable residen tial features, but is not affected by aircraft noise. Changes in sale prices between 1955 and 1967 is the depen dent variable. McClure finds no statistically significant differences in sale prices between the areas. He does mention the possibility of confounding factors such as the absence of new construction, high number of listings or declining real estate activity, but he does not control for them. Three other indicators are included in the analysis and are based on his hypothesis that an alternative measure of the economic impact is the cost of noise abatement. They are home insulation costs, avigation easements and home- o\raer litigation against airports. His final conclusion, 200 based on the two separate analyses is that aircraft noise does have a depressing effect on property values, but that it is not evident in the selling price of property: The hypothetical 1200 sq. ft., seven room, $24,000 stucco house exposed to lOOPNdB would be reduced in value by approximately $50, according to market survey data. It would cost about $3,781 to eliminate jet noise inside the structure. An avigation easement to compensate the owner for the value of that property right would cost approximately $3,342. And litigants allege the discrimination in value to be around $30,963. On the basis of this expanded definition of the economic impact of aircraft noise on exposed residences, McClure argues that property values would be decreased from 10 to 20 percent. Research Design Since the evidence on the negative spillover effects of aircraft noise on the market value of residential pro perty is not conclusive, the decision was made to analyze the relationship for the communities included in the general survey: Westchester, Inglewood, Lennox and El Segundo. The model that is used is based on multiple regression and is taken from a cross-sectional analysis of the relationship between air pollution, housing and neighborhood character- 20 istics and property values done by Ronald Ridker. 201 The unit of analysis Ridker employs is census tracts and the variables are primarily taken from the 1960 Census of Population. The dependent variable in the analysis is the median property value of owner-occupied units. The independent variables are listed in Table 6:9. An interesting aspect of the variable selection is the use of median family income. Ridker argues that it does not directly represent a submarket characteristic and using this as a rationale, regresses it on the other independent variables which represent housing and neighborhood quali ties. The residualized version of the variable serves as a proxy for housing and neighborhood characteristics not specifically included in the model. The predictor variables account for 94 percent of the variance in property values. Sulfation levels, the air pollution index, makes an independent contribution to the equation and is a more important predictor than differences in property taxes, travel time to CBD during rush hours and school quality. Median property values are reduced $245 per sulfation zone. A similar design is employed in the present analy sis. Data from the 197 0 Census of Population and Housing is used. Median property value for owner-occupied units is the independent variable. Aircraft noise as measured by the 202 TABLE 6:9 INDEPENDENT VARIABLES INCLUDED IN RIDKER STUDY OF RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN AIR POLLUTION, HOUSING AND NEIGHBORHOOD CHARACTERISTICS AND PROPERTY VALUES 1. AIR POLLUTION a. Sulfation levels by census tract 2. CHARACTERISTICS SPECIFIC TO THE PROPERTY a. Median number of rooms* b. Percentage of homes recently built* c. Houses per mile 3. LOCATION CHARACTERISTICS a. Travel time to CBD during rush hours b. Accessibility to highways c. Shopping area accessibility d. Industrial area accessibility 4. NEIGHBORHOOD CHARACTERISTICS a. School quality b. Crime rates c. Persons per unit* d. Ratio of craftsmen, foremen, operatives and laborers to total number of employed persons* 5. TAXES AND PUBLIC SERVICES a. Differences in property taxes 6. SUBMARKET VARIABLES a. Percent Black* b. Median family income* *From 1960 Census of Population and Housing 203 1970 Noise Exposure Forecast Contour discussed previously 21 is an independent variable. The other independent vari ables are the indicators that Ridker uses that are taken from census information: median number of rooms, per centage of homes recently built (since 1960), persons per unit (household), percent Black and residualized version of median family income. The ratio of craftsmen, foremen, operatives and laborers to total number of employed persons is dropped from the analysis because it can be interpreted as measuring the same thing as median family income as a -.80 correlation between the two variables suggests. Median family income is used in a residualized form as in Ridker's analysis. By regressing it on the other independent variables except aircraft noise the re siduals represent any features of the area not specifically measured by the other variables although this is not as clear in this case since a fewer number and less compre hensive lists of independent variables are employed. It should correlate positively with property values. Persons per household unit measures population density in residential areas. Ridker states that high values for this variable represent neighborhoods where there are a large number of children and consequently, 204 more wear-and-tear on property, play noise, etc., and should be negatively related to property values. Median number of rooms and percent homes built since 1960 should positively correlate with property values. A larger home is generally worth more and newer dwellings have depreciated less due to age. Percent Black, according to Ridker, may have a significant depreciating effect on property values. As discussed earlier, Inglewood has been undergoing a Black migration into the city since the mid-1960's. But with only six tracts with an appreciable Black population in 1970 there is the possibility that any effects due to this variable may not be picked up statistically since a total of thirty-eight tracts are included in the analysis. Additionally, Ridker points out that while the general effect of a Black population movement into a community depresses property values in impacted areas, the effects can vary from community to community depending upon such factors as demand and supply of housing, duration of the population movement and whether adjacent communities are 72 experiencing a similar influx. Another confounding factor may be the middle-class composition of the Black residents. In most population movements involving a Black migration into a community, the 205 first Black residents tend to be middle-class. They can afford to pay higher prices for a home which is usually what a Black moving into a white neighborhood has to pay. This has been the predominant pattern in Inglewood although there is evidence that lower class Blacks are now moving into the community. Data Analysis The correlations between the variables included in the analysis are in Table 6:10. A number of the hypotheses presented by Ridker are not supported by the data although the relationships are bivariate which does not necessarily indicate what the relationships between the variables will be when their influence is considered from a multivariate perspective. Persons per household has a positive rather than the hypothesized negative relationship with property values and both percent Black and percent homes built since 1960 have virtually no relationship to the dependent variable. But the three variables all correlate with number of rooms which in turn has a very strong correlation with property values. This indicates that the relationship between each of these variables and property values may be dependent up on a third factor, number of rooms. The bivariate 206 TABLE 6:10 PEARSON CORRELATIONS BETWEEN VARIABLES INCLUDED IN MULTIPLE REGRESSION MODEL OF THE RELATION SHIP BETWEEN PROPERTY VALUES AND AIRCRAFT NOISE VALUE NOISE INCOM RINCO PERSO BUILT BLACK ROOMS VALUE -.28 .85 .46 . 28 - . 04 -.02 .57 NOISE -.36 - .12 - .02 .24 . 04 - . 33 INCOM .45 .48 - . 18 . 00 .78 RINCO . 00 .00 .00 . 00 PERSO - . 55 .17 .76 BUILT - . 26 -.63 BLACK .27 VARIABLES: VALUE (Median property value) NOISE (1970 Noise Exposure Forecast Contour averaged by census tract) INCOM (Median family income; not included in model) RINCO (Residual of median family income regressed on other housing and neighborhood characteristics) PERSO (Persons per household) BUILT (Percent homes built since 1960) ROOMS (Median number of rooms) BLACK (Percent Black) 207 correlation between persons per household and number of rooms suggests that the number of persons living in a dwelling is dependent upon the amount of space available which is a reasonable assumption although in ghetto areas this may not necessarily be true. The negative correlation between percent homes built since 1960 and number of rooms indicates that the general trend in residential construc tion in the area has been toward smaller homes and/or apartments since median number of rooms is computed for all occupied housing units, not just those that are owner- occupied. The relationship between percent Black and number of rooms indirectly supports the point made earlier that the first Black residents into an area are generally middle- class because there is a tendency for them to be moving into areas where the dwellings have a greater number of rooms and consequently, are more expensive. Number of rooms, therefore, may have a confounding influence on the bivariate relationships between these variables and property values and its influence should be controlled. Partial correlations were computed between each of the variables and median property values with median number of rooms as the control variable and the results in Table 6:11 support this interpretation. In each 208 TABLE 6:11 PARTIAL CORRELATIONS BETWEEN MEDIAN PROPERTY VALUES AND PERSONS PER HOUSEHOLD, PERCENT HOMES BUILT SINCE 1960, PERCENT BLACK CONTROLLING FOR MEDIAN NUMBER OF ROOMS Variables (Median Property Values By) (1) Persons per Household (2) Percent Homes Built Since 1960 (3) Percent Black Zero-Order r_____ .28 -.04 -.02 First-Order Partial r Median Number of Rooms, Control Vari able - . 29 .49 -.22 209 case, the relationship changed dramatically and the correlation is in the direction originally hypothesized by Ridker. Two other bivariate correlations in Table 6:10 are important. Since the residualized version of median family income is orthogonal to the other independent variables with the exception of aircraft noise, it has no correlation with them. It still has a moderately strong correlation with median property values which supports Ridker’s contention that a residualized version of median family income mea sures neighborhood and housing characteristics not specifically indicated by the other independent variables in the model. Most importantly, there is a moderately negative correlation between aircraft noise and median property values. But this does not indicate whether the effect of aircraft noise is independent of that of the other pre dictor variables. This is the fundamental point of this analysis. Does aircraft noise depress property values beyond the effect of factors commonly associated with the determination of the market price of a single-family dwelling? The regression equation for median property values on the independent variables appears in Table 6:12. 210 TABLE 6:12 MULTIPLE REGRESSION OF MEDIAN PROPERTY VALUES ON AIRCRAFT NOISE, HOUSING AND NEIGHBORHOOD CHARACTERISTICS Variables Beta Weight Reg. Coeff./Stand. Err. Cl) Median Number of Rooms 1.17 9490 1386 (2) Residuali zed Median Family Income .46 2.29 .45 (3) Percent Homes Built Since 1960 .45 17957 4740 (4) Persons per Household -0.34 -4969 2259 (5) Percent Black -0.17 -6468 3730 (6) Aircraft Noise (Noise Exposure Forecast Contour by census tract) .05 402 889 R2 : .75 F6,31 15.59 SIGNIFICANCE = <.001 211 Seventy-five percent of the variance in property values is explained which is lower than the explanatory power of Ridker’s air pollution model, but this is under standable since a fewer number of independent variables are used in this analysis. Percent homes built since 1960, persons per house hold and percent Black all contribute to the explained variance and are correlated with property values in the expected direction. In fact, their relationship to property values is even stronger than their first-order partial correlation with number of rooms controlled. This indi cates that variables related to the determination of property values should be considered in relation to one another, not in isolation. Aircraft noise, however, does not have a reliable relationship with property values when analyzed in con junction with the other independent variables. It even has a positive correlation although the magnitude of its standard error makes any interpretation unreliable. On the basis of the findings generated by this cross-sectional model, there is no evidence that aircraft noise has had an impact on property values in the communities adjacent to Los Angeles International Airport. This agrees with the conclusions of McClure’s longitudinal 212 analysis.^3 But his study suggests that the negative spillover effects of aircraft noise may not be best indicated by property values. Using an expanded defini tion of its economic impact which includes home insulation costs, avigation easements, and homeowner litigation against airports, he concludes it does have an impact, but it is independent of property values. The issue, then, may not be whether property values in communities exposed to air craft noise are depressed, but rather what are the appro priate indicators to measure such an effect. Conclusion The two models provide different conclusions about the negative spillover effects of aircraft noise on the communities adjacent to Los Angeles International Airport. Aircraft noise shows a consistent relationship to character istics associated with community transition whether analyzed cross-sectionally with 1970 census data or when the data is adjusted for trends that existed in the communities in 1960, before aircraft noise became a serious community problem. A limitation with this model is that no other independent variables are included and thus the question of whether the possible effect of aircraft noise is independent of the influence of other factors which may also be related to demographic changes in the communities cannot be answered. An advantage of the analysis between aircraft noise and property values is that other independent variables are included in the model. The result is that a negative zero-order correlation between the variables, the higher the level of aircraft noise, the lower the property value, proves spurious. But the analysis by McClure raises the question of whether property values is the appropriate indicator to measure the negative economic spillover effects of aircraft noise.24 214 Because of the methodological differences between the models, it is difficult to evaluate the hypothesis about the link between aircraft noise, depressed resi dential property values and community transition with this data. But the relationship between aircraft noise and variables indicating community transition is suggestive of a possible effect aircraft noise may have on a community's social structure. The evidence of its impact on property values is less clear. Irrespective of the findings, however, any analysis of the negative externalities associated with aircraft noises should include a consideration of its possible impact on community transition. Aircraft noise is not simply a technological or economic problem, but a social one also. The decision agenda on aircraft noise needs to be broadened to include this dimension of the problem. Like any environmental pollution, aircraft noise has an effect on the quality of life in a community. 215 FOOTNOTES ^Nathan Hare, "Black Ecology," The Black Scholar 1 (April 1970) : 2-8 . ? National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Community Reaction to Airport Noise, vol. 1, by Tracor, Inc., NASA CR-17 61 (Washington, EL C.: National Technical Information Service, 1971), 24-28 and Aubrey C. McKennell, "Noise Complaints and Community Action," in Transportation Noises, ed., James D. Chalupnik (Seattle: University oi: Washington Press, 1970), 240-242. * 7 Demetrius J. Plessas, "Airport Noise: Some Analytic and Policy Perspectives," Land Economics 49 (February 1973), 20. “ ^Daniel P. Moynihan, Maximum Feasible Misunder standing (New York: Free Press, 1969) , 7TT ' ’Ralph Turvey, "Side Effects of Resource Use," in Environmental Quality in a Growing Economy, ed., Henry Jarrett (Baltimore: John Hopkins Press, 1966), 52. ^The contour is taken from Dwight E. Bishop and Richard D. Horonjeff, 1965, 1970 and 1975 Noise Exposure Forecast Areas for Los Angeles International Airport (Los Angeles: Bolt, Beranek and Newman L1967J). 7 Doris B. Holleb, Social and Economic Information for Urban Planning (Chicago": University of Chicago Press, 1969), 155-161. ^Norman H. Nie, Dale H. Bent C. Hadlai Hull, Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1970), 218-219. 9R. J. Rummel, "Understanding Factor Analysis," Journal of Conflict Resolution 11 (December 1967):471-475. • * - 9There is the possibility that a census tract may be too large a unit of aggregation to permit this hypo thesis to be accurately tested. An alternative strategy would be to use block-level census data and more precise aircraft noise measurements, but this is beyond the scope of the present analysis. 216 11 For a discussion of this problem see Mordical Ezekiel and Karl A. Fox, Methods of Correlation and Regression Analysis (New York: Wiley, 1966), 325-247. i 7 Quinn McNemar, Psychological Statistics (New York: Wiley, 1969), 185-186. 1 3 For examples see Paul K. Dygert, "A Public Enterprise Approach to Jet Aircraft Noise Around Airports," in Alleviation of Jet Aircraft Noise Near Airports: A Report of the Jet Aircraft Noise Panel, Office of Science and Technology (Washington, D. C.: Government Printing Office, 1966), 107-116. 14This argument is made by Clifford Bragdon, Noise Pollution: The Unquiet Crisis (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 11)70), 160-161. 15 National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Community Reaction to Airport Noise, vol. 2, by Tracor, Inc., NASA CR-111316 (Washington, D. C.: National Techni cal Information Service, 1971). ■^Bragdon, 160-161. -^D. M. Zamarin, L. E. Langdon and R. F. Gabriel, A Summary of Two Community Surveys on the Effects of Air craft Noise (Long Beach, Calif.: Douglas Aircraft Company 1.1971]), 44. ■^Paul T. McClure, Indicators of the Effect of Jet Noise on the Value of Real Estate (Santa Monica, Calif. : Rand Corporation, | _ 1969J). 19Ibid., 34. ^Ronald Ridker, Economic Costs of Air Pollution (New York: Praeger, 1967j^ 115-140. ^Bishop and Horonjeff, 1-9. 7 7 See also Luigi Laurenti, Property Values and Race (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1960), 2^McClure, 34. 24Ibid. CHAPTER VII CONCLUSION In this chapter, the findings of the previous chapters will be summarized and their implications for the aircraft noise policy process at Los Angeles Inter national Airport discussed. The chapter will be divided into three parts. First, the major findings of the study will be discussed. Secondly, a systems model of the air craft noise policy process will be presented. Lastly, policy implications of the findings and areas of future research will be considered. Summary of Major Findings Inputs: Dimensions of Individual and Group Political Activity Only 5 percent of the residents in the communities adjacent to the airport are members of community organiza tions active in the area of aircraft noise. Other types of reported political activity are attendance at community meetings (12 percent) and personal involvement other than group-related participation (10 percent). The general pattern of citizen political activity has been sporadic and fragmented. Seventy-six percent of the instances of political activity were performed by a 217 218 person who would not participate in any other way. Over all, the level of participation is similar to that observed in relation to local politics in general. Operationally defining political activity as whether a person has parti cipated in any one of the three activities described above, 21 percent of the residents have engaged in some form of political action. Inputs: Correlates of Political Activity Individual-level political activity directed at the problem of aircraft noise is not a random occurrence, but is systematically related to a number of factors: (1) sub jective annoyance with aircraft noise, (2) objective exposure to aircraft noise, (3) type and length of resi dence, (4) attitude toward the airport's sense of political responsibility and (5) socio-economic status. When the joint effects of these variables on political activity is considered, three of the variables prove +o be reliable predictors: (1) interaction variable based on subjective annoyance with and objective exposure to aircraft noise, (2) socio-economic status and (3) attitude toward the airport's sense of political responsi bility. The explain 18 percent of the variance in 219 political activity and the relationship is significant at .001. Since two of the three predictor variables are directly related to the noise problem, individual-level political activity can be conceptualized as neighborhood problem-solving. Rather than being acquiescent or moving, a person makes the choice to try and remedy the problem by engaging in political action. Outputs and Outcomes: Public Responses to Changes in Aircraft Operational Procedures Implemented to Reduce Community Noise Levels An announcement by Los Angeles International Air port (LAX) to implement over-ocean approaches between 11:00 P.M. and 6:00A.M., thus avoiding direct residential over-flights, is generally evaluated favorably by residents in the adjacent communities. Thirty-nine percent feel it will reduce the present noise level while only 8 percent think it will get worse. Fifty percent do not think it will make any difference, but this is understandable since many persons are not annoyed by jet noise who live in the area. A very important finding is that a policy such as this one can change attitudes toward the airport. Twenty- seven percent of the residents say their attitude toward 220 the airport is more favorable because of the airport’s announcement of the procedure change. The policy is also both symbolic and tangible. Forty-six percent of the persons who report their attitude toward the airport is changed do not think the procedure change will have any impact on their neighborhood. Since their change of attitude is not based on the probable effect of the procedure change on the noise level, a possible explanation is that the airport's attempt to do something about aircraft noise prompted the change. The impact of this noise abatement policy does have some negative externalities associated with it. While the over-ocean approach markedly reduces the noise in communi ties under the normal approach paths, the data indicates that persons living in neighborhoods parallel to the run ways fear the noise may be increased. There is some justification in their reservations about the procedure change. When the normal operating procedures are in effect they are only affected by takeoff or landing noise whereas when the procedure change is in operation they may be subject to both sets of emissions. This poses a dilemma for the airport policy-maker. A judgment has to be made whether the benefits of noise abatement policy of this type outweighs its costs. 221 This noise abatement policy represents a signi ficant concession by the air transportation industry to local community concerns about the noise. For almost a decade, the major response of the industry to the problem of aircraft noise was a series of "nondecisions." This history of inaction is a major roadblock to public acceptance of their noise abatement efforts. While a significant percentage of the general and attentive publics think the operational change will reduce the noise, the relationship varies with a person's perception of the air port's political responsibility. If the airport is seen as irresponsible, then its noise abatement activities tend to be selectively perceived. That is, even if the noise level is actually reduced, the abatement policy will be evaluated negatively. This makes the task of the airport in noise abatement twofold. It must not only reduce the noise, but also convince people of the sincerity of its commitment to noise abatement. Outputs and Outcomes: Homeowner Responses to Airport Purchases of Residential Property Because of airport expansion, rising noise levels and safety considerations, the airport has been purchasing residential property since 1967. Some of these purchases 222 can be conceptualized as a noise abatement policy since the property was not condemned, but the airport offered to buy the property in response to citizen concern over aircraft noise. While these home purchases did reduce the jet noise level for homeowners by allowing them to relocate, the overall impact of the airport's home purchasing pro gram for residents was negative in a personal and economic sense. Eighty-eight percent said they were bothered by aircraft noise which is a good motivation to move. But 76 percent said that if their neighborhood had remained intact, their property either had not been condemned or the airport had not begun to buy property on a voluntary basis, they would not have sold their homes. The home owner's plight is further exemplified by the fact that 88 percent were not concerned about aircraft noise before they moved into their homes. The intrusion of the airport through expansion and aircraft noise into these neighborhoods caused considerable anxiety for the local resident. These factors were an important motivation behind individuals joining local homeowner groups. The general assumption behind why a person joins an organization is that through collective action greater benefits can be gained than by 223 individual action. This definition of the motivation underlying homeowner groups activity in these neighbor hoods was accepted by the airport. It assumed the homeowner groups only represented an effort by the local residents to get a better price for their property. While this was a factor behind homeowner group membership, an independent and more important reason was the anxiety generated by the airport’s expansion and rising aircraft noise levels. The data indicates some of the negative externali ties associated with airport expansion and aircraft noise. The air transport industry is now committed to a solution to the aircraft noise problem. A measure of its commit ment will be the degree to which it assumes the political responsibility for the production of these externalities rather than leaving the homeowner to bear these costs himself. Outputs and Outcomes: Impact of Air craft Noise on Community Socio-Economic Structure An aspect of the aircraft noise problem often overlooked is the effect aircraft noise can have on the demographic structure of a community. A number of hypo theses relating aircraft noise, property values and 224 changes in community socio-economic structure have been formulated. They suggest that aircraft noise depresses property values by making a neighborhood residentially un attractive. As the value of the property declines, the area becomes a market for low-income housing. In this sense, aircraft noise may have the same effect on the residential stability of a community as a Black population migration into a community. Changes in the socio-economic composition of a community's population may be an outcome of the "non decisions" characteristic of the air transportation policy process during the 1960's. "Nondecisions" are, in effect, a policy since the reluctance to consider an issue has certain consequences just as if the decision was made to deal with it. This hypothesis was examined in different ways. First, a factor scale representing community transition was constructed using 1970 census tract data. The variables included in the scale are unemployment and vacancy rate, percent of minority race persons (not including Blacks), median family income and residential stability. This scale was correlated with a 1970 Noise Exposure Forecast (NEF) contour averaged by census tract. Aircraft noise accounted for 18 percent of the variance 225 in the community transition scale. The relationship also holds when the variance in the 1970 census data due to patterns existing in the communities in 1960 is removed. Since aircraft noise only became a community problem in 1959, this removes the possibility that the correlation could be due to a pattern of community transition that existed prior to then. A separate model to analyze the relationship be tween aircraft noise and property values was also developed. The independent variables, besides aircraft noise, were drawn from a study of air pollution and property values. They represent different housing and neighborhood charac teristics and are based on census data. Seventy-five percent of the variance in property values is explained by the variables. Aircraft noise has a bivariate correlation with property values, but the relationship is spurious when the other variables are controlled. The data does, however, support part of the hypo thesis about the relationship between aircraft noise, property values and community transition. There is a correlation between aircraft noise and community transi tion, but the relationship apparently does not include declining property values. While this may be a function 226 of the different models used in the analysis, the data is suggestive of the possible impact aircraft noise may have on the demographic structure of a community. Demands, Outputs and Outcomes as Dimensions of the Aircraft Noise Policy Process at Los Angeles International Airport One way to conceptualize the relationship between the variables included in the analysis is in terms of a systems model. Demands on the airport involve claims for various types of outputs such as lower aircraft noise levels or compensation for social or economic costs incurred because of aircraft noise. These demands are processed by the airport. However, nothing may be done, i.e., a "nondecision." In other cases, an actual output may be produced to meet these demands. The output may or may not prove satisfactory depending upon what types of outcomes result. For example, the airport implemented a home purchasing program in response to public concern over rising aircraft noise levels, but the primary result of this policy was considerable social and economic hardships to homeowners affected by the policy. This was an impact not originally anticipated by the airport although this 22 7 does not alleviate it of any responsibility for it. Finally, depending upon the outcome a policy has, certain types of demands on or supports for the system result. Using this systems model as a general framework and the variables included in the analysis as specific parts of this framework, this aspect of the aircraft noise policy process at Los Angeles International Airport can be modeled as a flow diagram. Each variable represents a decision point and depending upon the choice, certain outcomes result. Terminology and concepts used in the model are drawn from urban processes and municipal budgeting simulations developed by Forrester and Crecine.^ The model is presented in Figure 7:1. It includes ten variables which are either included in the actual empirical analysis or based on variables that are included. Each of the variables is a decision point. Depending upon the particular attitude, perception or personal character istic of an individual or the type of policy adopted by the airport, different outcomes occur. Each outcome represents a different stage of development in this part of the aircraft noise policy process at Los Angeles Inter national Airport. An important aspect of the model is that it is dynamic. Any stage may repeat itself. Also, a change in any part affects the other parts. FIGURE 7:1 DEMAND, HIGH— I ACQUIESCENCE STRONG I GO TO 2 OUTPUT AND OUTCOME DIMENSIONS OF THE AIRCRAFT NOISE POLICY SYSTEM AT LOS ANGELES INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT HIGH* MED COSTS OF (3) •POLITICAL ACTION* AIRCRAFT NOISE CD I PERCEIVED 'ANNOYANCE' ■LOW (2) LOW NONE I ENVIRONMENTAL SATISFACTION LARGE I PERCEIVED (5) POLITICAL RESPONSIBILITY OF AIRPORT- PERSONAL (4) INVESTMENT 'IN COMMUNITY" “ “MODERATE NONE 1 DEMANDS (6) FOR NOISE ABATEMENT — SMALL I MOVE 228 FIGURE 7:1-Continued YES— I TYPE (8) OF POLICY NOISE (7) ABATEMENT POLICY GO TO HIGH* I GO TO 6 MODERATE* ATTITUDE (13) •CHANGE— NO YES' I NO FURTHER DEMANDS SYMBOLIC I PERCEIVED (9) •ANNOYANCE' ■MED TANGIBLE YES' HIGH— - I PERCEIVED (11) •REDUCTION— NO I GO TO 6 PERCEIVED (10) •ANNOYANCE— ■MED PERCEIVED (12) POLITICAL RESPONSIBILITY •OF AIRPORT NONE I GO TO 6 GO TO 6, BUT REDUCED LEVEL OF DEMANDS 229 230 The model is a simplified statement of the observed relationships between variables included in the analysis. Some aspects are inferred from the actual data so that these parts may be more conceptual than empirical. But the model does indicate the basic dimensions of the air craft noise policy process focused on in this study. The airport decision process is "black-boxed” with the emphasis being on the relationship between demands, outputs and outcomes. A Flow Diagram of the Relationship Between Demands, Outputs and Out comes of the Aircraft Noise Policy Process at Los Angeles International Airport In this section, the parts of the aircraft noise policy process that appear in Figure 7:1 will be described. Each variable or decision point and the sequential step from one level to another will form the basis of the discussion. The actual sequence of steps is indicated by numbers appearing next to the variables. Aircraft noise (1) to perceived annoyance (2) Without the presence of jet aircraft noise there would not be a policy problem. Depending upon its level any of the variables may change their values. In this sense, it is the primary independent variable. It most 231 directly impacts upon perceived annoyance. But annoyance with aircraft noise is only a necessary, not sufficient cause of political activity directed at the noise problem. Perceived annoyance (2) to costs of political action C5) A person may be exposed to aircraft noise, but it does not annoy him. This produces environmental satis faction at least in relation to the problem of aircraft noise. This does not mean, however, that at some future date he will not become annoyed if the noise level in creases . If a person is bothered by aircraft noise, defined here as medium or high annoyance, he has to make a choice about the costs of political action. This is related more to his socio-economic status than a dimension of the air craft noise problem itself. Costs of political action (3) to personal investment m community Some persons may be bothered by aircraft noise, but the costs of political action may be too high for them to try and do anything politically about the noise. Socio economic status is one of the best predictors of political activity and this applies to this policy area also. Typically, low socio-economic status persons neither have 232 the time nor resources necessary to engage in political activity. This tends to be reinforced by a generally low sense of political efficacy which is to a degree a function of education. These mutually reinforcing factors combine to make an individual politically acquiescent. But if a person is of relatively high socio-eco nomic status, he may perceive the costs of political action as low. An added factor, however, is his personal moti vation based on his feeling about his community. Personal investment in community (4) to perceived political responsibility of airport (5) A person may perceive the costs of political action as low, but lack the motivation to try and solve the prob lem through personal action. One way to measure this is in terms of his personal investment in his community. He may be annoyed by aircraft noise, but he may not value his residential environment to the degree that he would want to take political action to improve it. An alter native problem-solving response is to move. This solves the problem for him personally, but may further contri bute to a declining neighborhood if other residents also make the choice to move. Large numbers of people moving out of a neighborhood may in itself become a motivation to move in addition to aircraft noise. 233 A person who does value his residential environment may be motivated to engage in political action to maintain it. But the actual choice to become involved depends upon one other factor: the perceived political responsibility of the airport. Perceived political responsibility of airport (5) to demands for noise abatement (6) A person may be annoyed by aircraft noise, feel the costs of political action are low and have a high personal investment in his community, but still not become politically active. If he thinks the airport or the air transportation industry in general is trying to solve the problem, he may feel it is not necessary for him to take personal action. His attitude may change in the future particularly if aircraft noise persists as a problem despite airport or industry efforts to the contrary. This may lead him to question the sincerity of their commitment to noise abatement. Conversely, if an individual does not think the airport or the industry is acting responsibly, it is very likely he will engage in political activity. While the model up to this point is an obvious simplification of the actual process by which a person makes the choice to become politically involved, it does indicate the complexity of this process. . 234 Demands for noise abatement (6) to noise abatement policy (7) and type of policy (8) Demands for noise abatement may be made, but nothing is actually done about the problem. This has the effect of making the problem worse since the noise con tinues unabated while any increase in air traffic means a greater frequency of exposure. An alternative to this "nondecision" is for the airport to implement a noise abatement policy. But the eventual impact of the policy on public attitudes and behavior is as difficult to predict as the factors leading to a person becoming politically active. Type of policy (8) to perceived annoyance (9-10) Noise abatement policies may be either symbolic or tangible. A symbolic output has a marginal effect on the noise level, but indicates that the airport is trying to solve the problem. A tangible output, in contrast, results in a marked lowering of the noise. While it is operationally difficult to distinguish between these two types fo policies, these categories suggest different policy strategies open to the airport. A symbolic output requires fewer resources, but indicates the airport is trying to reduce the noise. The outcome of this policy depends upon how salient the problem of aircraft 235 noise is to a person. It is unlikely that a person who is highly annoyed would respond favorably to a policy which had little effect on the noise. In contrast, a person who is less bothered might respond quite favorably if he were convinced that the airport was committed to finding a solution. A symbolic output could cause this person to change his attitude toward the airport and possibly result in his making no further demands on the airport for noise abate ment given the present situation. The highly annoyed person would not be as easily satisfied and most likely would continue to pressure the airport. Given the salience of the problem, a policy which proved more symbolic than tangible might even increase his frustration. For the highly annoyed individual, the process of attitude change is much more complex. Perceived annoyance (10) to perceived reduction (11), Perceived political responsibility of airport (12) and attitude change (15) A noise abatement policy to be favorably evaluated by people highly annoyed by aircraft noise must result in a substantial reduction of the noise level. But even this is not sufficient cause for a change of attitude toward the airport to occur. 236 People who feel the airport is politically irresponsible are unlikely to evaluate anything the air port does favorably. They simply distrust the motivations of the airport. This opinion of the airport is largely due to its history of "nondecisions" regarding noise abatement. Until the airport can sufficiently convince these persons of the sincerity of its commitment to noise abatement, political pressure on the airport will continue. Noise abatement is as much a political as a tech nological process and the eventual success of the airport will depend upon the recognition of this fact. General Policy Considerations and Areas of Further Research The model while a simplification of the demand, output and outcome dimension of the aircraft noise policy process at Los Angeles International Airprot does indicate how complex it is. Aircraft noise is not simply a tech nological problem. It has broad political, economic, social and psychological ramifications which must be reflected in aircraft noise abatement policies if they are to be successful. The air transportation industry, both the public and private sectors, is now committed to finding a solution to the aircraft noise problem. The question now is not 237 whether something will be done, but what kind of solutions will be offered and how long will it take to implement them? A complete solution will require jet engines that are virtually noiseless, but this is far in the future. In the meantime, what is going to happen? In the immediate future, only incremental reduc tions in the noise levels around airports can be expected. Changes in operational procedures and compatible land-use offer the best short-run alternatives. But whether these types of noise abatement policies will prove satisfactory to people residing in areas exposed to aircraft noise is a moot point. The data from this study indicates that pro cedure changes can receive an initially favorable public response, but expectations may also be raised about the eventual possibility of a quiet environment so that even greater pressures may be placed on the airport for noise abatement. Airport policy-makers should be aware that their commitment to noise abatement has produced expecta tions about the future and they will partially be judged according to these expectations. Compatible land-use is also a complex issue. The expansion of jet operations at Los Angeles International Airprot illustrates some of the problems. Due to a combination of FAA safety regulations and aircraft noise, 238 the airport engaged in a home purchasing program. Most of the residents who sold their homes did not want to move even with the high level of jet noise they experienced. Their homes and neighborhoods were more than physical structures. They were personal and social environments which are very hard to replace. If compatible land-use is used as a method of noise abatement, social costs will have to be considered along with technological and economic feasibility. Unfortunately, in its initial expansion, Los Angeles International Airport did not consider this dimen sion of the problem. The question of social costs is a central issue of technological development. The disadvantages accruing from technological innovation have to be assessed in the context of the total environment. Aircraft noise became a political issue because the air transportation industry, particularly the public sector, ignored the negative spill over effects associated with jet air travel. The quality of life in communities adjacent to major jet airports will depend in the future on the degree to which social costs are reflected in the decision agendas regarding air transportation. Future research in the area of aircraft noise can be directed toward understanding this process. As this 239 analysis has indicated, the outcome of a particular policy dealing with aircraft noise is complex and difficult to anticipate. Many variables are involved. With this complexity, policies may produce outcomes which are counterintuitive.^ That is, just the opposite from what is expected may occur. In the area of noise abatement policy-making, one way to anticipate community reaction is through surveys which are conducted prior to implementation of a policy. This was attempted in this study and subsequent events verified the findings. Surveys can also be used to monitor community opinion. The need for this was evident when the airport received only fourteen calls from residents regarding a noise abatement policy they had implemented. Airport officials had to largely rely upon reports in local newspapers for information on community response to the policy. Uncertainty of this type can be avoided if sur veys are used to assess the impact of noise abatement policies. Surveys as means to anticipate and monitor community opinion regarding the noise environment can help airport officials formulate more responsive noise abatement policies. 240 Raymond Bauer points out that while there is an attitude developing among public decision-makers which places as much emphasis on representation of community interests as on technological and economic feasibility, people are increasingly demanding participation in the actual decision process itself.^ While not a substitute, surveys of community attitudes are a step in this direction and can serve to strengthen the link between the citizen and the governmental process --something that was certainly missing the first decade of the aircraft noise problem. The issue of aircraft noise will probably not again produce the "rancorous" conflict of past years. But this does not mean it has ceased to be a problem. More research is required if all the dimensions of the issue are to be understood. This study has only focused on one air port for a short period of time. Analysis of aircraft noise abatement policies at other airports are needed. Additionally, only limited attention in this study has been devoted to the structure and dynamics of the decision making process within the public sector of the air transportation industry. This type of an analysis needs to be done. It is also important to consider the problem of aircraft noise from a broad perspective. While only a 241 minor environmental pollution and with a restricted geographic impact, it does provide a case study of the tension that exists between the demands of technological development and responsive public policy. The kinds of policy choices dictated by technology are often at odds with the needs of the average citizen. The quality of life that modern society will offer in the future will depend on how these factors will be weighted in the determination of public policy. 242 FOOTNOTES Ijay W. Forrester, Urban Dynamics (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1969) and John P. Crecine, Governmental Problem- Solving (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1969). I would like to thank David Wentworth of the Department of Politics, North Carolina State University for his assistance in developing the model. ^Forrester, 9-10. ^Raymond Bauer, "Predicting the Future," in Transportation Noises, ed., James D. Chalupnik (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1970), 249. APPENDIX A QUESTIONNAIRE FOR CROSS-COMMUNITY SAMPLE Do you reside in a home or apartment? Home ____ Apartment ____ When did you move to your present home or apartment? Would you describe the noise in your area as: just part of the general noise in your environment frequently annoying seriously interfering with normal living activities intolerable In what ways, if any, does aircraft noise invade upon your normal living activities: sleeping normal conversation reading watching television outdoor activity ____________________________________________other The management of Los Angeles International Airport recently announced a change in operating procedures. Have you received any information about this change? Yes ______ No________ (If respondent answers no, describe policy and proceed to question 8) 244 6. What is the change? answered correctly vague idea (describe policy if this response checked) did not know (describe policy if this response checked) 7. Did you first hear about the new procedure from: a friend or neighbor in the newspaper on television 8. Do you think this new procedure will: result in a major reduction of noise in your area slightly improve the noise in your area have no effect on your area make the noise in your area slightly worse make the noise in your area much worse 9. In general, does this announcement change your attitude toward the airport? Yes No____ 10. At the present time, do you feel that the airport management feels: a strong sense of responsibility to the surrounding communities a moderate sense of responsibility to the surround ing communities no sense of responsibility to the surrounding communities 245 11. Have you ever been a member of an organization which has been active in the area of aircraft noise? Yes No (If respondent answers no, proceed to question 15) 12. What is the name of the organization and during what period of time have you been a member? 13. Would you say that you have been: inactive in the organization somewhat active in the organization very active in the organization 14. Could you give me the names of two leaders of your organization? 15. Do you attend community meetings dealing with airport noise? often sometimes never 16. Have you worked on the airport noise problem in any other ways? Yes No (If respondent answers no, end survey) 17. What ways? APPENDIX B QUESTIONNAIRE FOR HOMEOWNERS WHOSE PROPERTY HAD BEEN PURCHASED BY THE AIRPORT When did you originally buy your home in Westchester? When you moved in were you concerned about airport noise? Yes No Would you describe the aircraft noise before you moved as: just part of the general noise in your environment frequently annoying seriously interfering with normal living activities intolerable In what ways, if any, did aircraft noise affect your normal living activities: sleeping normal conversation reading watching television outdoor activity When did the airport first offer to buy your home?____ When did the airport purchase your property?__________ Did you sell quickly or wait before selling? sell quickly wait before selling 247 8. Had you tried to sell the house previous to that? Yes No 9. Were you offered a fair price for your property? Yes No IF YES, GO TO 12. SKIP 10 AND 11 10. Did you appeal? Yes No 11. Were you satisfied with the price you were finally paid? Yes No 12. Did the relocation office assist you in finding a new home? Yes No 13. Were you able to replace your home with one of comparable price? Yes No 14. In your dealings with the airport do you feel you were treated fairly? Yes No 15. Please explain _______________________________________ 16. If your neighborhood had remained intact and you had had the opportunity as an individual to sell your home at a satisfactory price, would you have done so: Yes No IF NO GO TO 18. SKIP 17. 248 17. For what reasons? aircraft noise children grown up expense of owning a home wanted a nicer home other 18. Do you think the airport management understands the problems the airport creates for the homeowner? Yes No 19. On what do you base your opinion? 20. Why, in your opinion, did the airport purchase your property? 21. Do you feel that the airport management feels: a strong sense of responsibility to the surround ing communities a moderate sense of responsibility to the surround ing communities no sense of responsibility to the surrounding communities 22. In your dealings with the airport were you represented by an attorney? Yes No IF NO GO TO 25. SKIP 23 and 24. 249 23. Do you think that you got a better price than if you had not obtained an attorney to represent you? Yes No 24. Why?_______________________________________________ 25. Did you belong to a homeowners' group in your area? Yes No 26. Did you attend community meetings dealing with the problem of airport noise? Yes No 27. Did you work on the airport noise problem in any way at all? Yes No 28. What ways?__________________________________________ 29. Do you have any type of noise problem in your present location? Yes No 30. Specify 250 BIBLIOGRAPHY Aircraft Noise Baxter, William F. and Altree, Lillian. "Legal Aspects of Airport Noise." Journal of Law and Economics 15 (April 1972) : 1-13"[ Bishop, Dwight E. and Horonjeff, Richard D. 1965, 1970 and 197 5 Noise Exposure Forecast Areas for Los Angeles International Airport-! Los Angeles: Bolt, Beranek and Newman L1967J. Bragdon, Clifford R. Noise Pollution: The Unquiet Crisis. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1970. Chalupnik, James D., ed. Transportation Noises. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1970. Goodman, Robert. "Airport Noise and the Changing Pattern of Airport-Community Politics." Working paper for the Center for Urban Affairs. University of Southern California, Los Angeles, February 1973. McClure, Paul T. Indicators of the Effect of Jet Noise on the Value of Real Estate. Santa Monica, Calif.: Rand Corporation, L1969J. National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Community Reaction to Aircraft Noise Around Smaller Community Airports, by William K. Conners and Harold P. Patterson. NASA CR-2104. Washington, D.C.: National Technical Information Service, 1972. National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Community Reaction to Airport Noise. Vol. 1, by Tracor, Inc. NASA CR-1761. Washington, D.C.: National Technical Information Service, 1971. Office of Science and Technology. Alleviation of Jet Air craft Noise Near Airports: A Report of the JeT Aircraft Noise Panel. Washington, D.C.: Govern ment Printing Office, 1966. 251 Plessas, Demetrius J. "Airport Noise: Some Analytic and Policy Perspectives." Land Economics (February 1973) : 20. Stevenson Jr., Gordon McKay. The Politics of Airport Noise Belmont, Calif. : Duxbury Press, 1972. Ward, W. Dixon and Fricke, James E. , eds. Noise as a Public Health Hazard. Washington, D.C.: American Speech and Hearing Association, 1961. Zamarin, D. M.; Langdon, L. E.; and Gabriel, R. F. A Summary of Two Community Surveys on the Effects of Aircraft Noise. Long Beach, Calif.: Douglas Aircraft Company, [1971]. General Environmental Crenson, Matthew A. The Unpolitics of Air Pollution. Baltimore: John Hopkins Press, 1971. Davies III, J. Clarence. The Politics of Pollution. New york: Pegasus, 1970. Frederickson, H. George and Magnus, Howard. "Comparing Attitudes Toward Water Pollution in Syracuse." Water Resources Research 4 (October 1968):877-889. Goldner, Lester. "Air Pollution Control in the Metropoli tan Boston Area." In The Economics of Air Pollution, 127-159. Edited by Harold Wolozin. New York: Norton, 1966. Hite, James C. and Laurent, Eugene A. Environmental Planning: An Economic Analysis" New York: Praeger, 1972. Kates, Robert W. Hazard and Choice Perception in Flood Plain Management. Department of Geography Research Paper No. 78. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962. Loveridge, Ronald 0. "Political Science and Air Pollution: A Review and Assessment of the Literature” In Air Pollution and the Social Sciences, 45-86. Edited by Paul B. Downing. New York: Praeger, 1971. 252 Murch, Arvin W. "Public Concern for Environmental Pollution." Public Opinion Quarterly 35 (Spring 1971): 102-10F: O'Riordan, Thomas. "Public Opinion and Environmental Quality." Environment and Behavior 3 (June 1971): 191-213. Ridker, Ronald G. Economic Costs of Air Pollution: Studies in Measurement. New York: Praeger, 1967. Saarinen, Thomas F. Perception of the Drought Hazard on the Great Plains. Department of Geography Research Paper No. 106. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1966. Swan, James A. "Responses to Air Pollution, A Study of Attitudes and Coping Strategies of High School Youths." Environment and Behavior 2 (September 1970): 127-152": Turvey, Ralph. "Side Effects of Resource Use." In Environ mental Quality in a Growing Economy, 52. Edited by Henry Jarrett. Baltimore: John Hopkins Press, 1966. Urban Politics and Public Policy Alford, Robert and Scoble, Harry M. "Sources of Local Political Involvement." American Political Science Review 62 (December 1968)7 1192-12067 Bachrach, Peter and Baratz, Morton S. Power and Poverty. New York: Oxford University Press, 1970. Bachrach, Peter and Baratz, Morton S. "The Two Faces of Power." American Political Science Review 57 (December 1962): 947 - 952. Banfield, Edward and Wilson, James Q. City Politics. New York: Vintage, 1962. Bauer, Raymond. "Detection and Anticipation of Impact: The Nature of the Task." in Social Indicators, 1-67. Edited by Raymond Bauer. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1966. 253 Cleaveland, Frederic N. Congress and Urban Problems. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, T969. Coleman, James. Community Conflict. Glencoe, 111: Free Press, 1957. Crain, Robert L.; Katz, Elihu; and Rosenthal, Donald B. The Politics of Community Conflict. New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1969. Easton, David. A Framework for Political Analysis. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 19*65. Easton, David. A Systems Analysis of Political Life. New York! Wiley, 1965. Edelman, Murray. The Symbolic Uses of Politics. Urbana, 111.: University o£ Illinois Press, T970. Holleb, Doris B. Social and Economic Information for Urban Planning. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1969. Jones, Victor. "Methodology in the Study of Metropolitan Areas." In The Study of the Metropolitan Region of Chicago: ~0bjecfives and Methodology^ Evanston, 111.: Northwestern Political Science Department, 1952. Lasswell, Harold. Politics: Who Gets What, When, How. Cleveland: World, 1968. Laurenti, Luigi. Property Values and Race. Berkeley: University of California Press, I960. Lindblom, "The Science of ’Muddling Through.1" Public Administration Review 19 (Spring 1959) : 79-88. Lineberry, Robert L. "Approaches to the Study of Community Politics." In Community Politics: A Behavioral Approach, 16-25! Edited by Charles Bonjean. New York: Free Press, 1971. Lineberry, Robert L. and Sharkansky, Ira. Urban Politics and Public Policy. New York: Harper and Row, 19*71. 254 Lowi, Theodore J. ’ ’ American Business, Public Policy, Case Studies and Political Theory." World Politics 16 (July 1964): 677-715. Lowi, Theodore J. The End of Liberalism. New York: Norton, 1969. Moynihan, Daniel P. Maximum Feasible Misunderstanding. New York: Free Press, 1970. Olson, Mancur. The Logic of Collective Action. Cambridge: Harvard University, 1971. Orbell, John M. and Uno, Toru. "A Theory of Neighborhood Problem-Solving: Political Action vs. Residential Mobility." American Political Science Review 65 (June 1972): 475. Orleans, Peter. "Urban Experimentation and Urban Soci ology." in Science, Engineering and the City. National Academy of Sciences and National Academy of Engineering. Washington, D.C.: National Academy of Sciences, 1967. Parenti, Michael. "Power and Pluralism: A View from the Bottom." Journal of Politics 32 (August 1970): 528. Ranney, Austin. "The Study of Policy Content: A Framework for Choice." In Political Science and Public Policy. Edited by Austin Ranney. Chicago: Markham, 1968. Schon, Donald A. Technology and Change. New York: Dell, 1967. Smith, Robert G. Public Authorities, Special Districts and Local Governments. Washington, D.C.: National Association of Counties, 1964. Sogg, Wilton S. and Wertheimer, Warren. "Legal and Govern mental Issues in Urban Renewal." In Urban Renewal: The Record and the Controversy. Edited by James Q. Wilson. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1966. 255 Warren, Robert and Weschler, Louis F. "Governing Urban Space: Non-Territorial Politics." Paper presented at the convention of the American Political Science Association, Washington, D.C., September 1972.
Linked assets
University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses
Conceptually similar
PDF
Contemporary Theological Approaches And The Political Role Of The Anglo-American Protestant Denominations In An Urban Complex
PDF
The Impact Of The "Miranda" Decision On Police Procedures And Morale
PDF
Alienation And Integration In The Political Attitudes Of Suburban Adolescents
PDF
The Relationship Between Community Political Systems And Defense Contracting
PDF
Political Development And Political Parties In Turkey
PDF
The Electoral Impact Of School Desegregation In 67 Northern Cities
PDF
Some Administrative Relations Of The Indian States And Union, 1950-1956
PDF
Domestic Violence And Indicators Of Social Change Within Nations: A Regional Perspective
PDF
Models In The Study Of Political Development: A Critique
PDF
Dissonance and Self-Perception Analysis of "Forced Compliance": When Two Theories Make Competing Predictions
PDF
Perception Of The Power Structure By Social Class In A California Community
PDF
Southern Congressmen And Welfare Policy In The 1960'S: A Case Study Of Redistributive Politics
PDF
The Concept Of The Ministry In The Thought Of Representative Men Of The Disciples Of Christ (1804-1906)
PDF
Representation Theory And Apportionment Models: A Study Of California Constituencies
PDF
The Influence Of Anti-Poverty Policy-Making Upon Poverty Decision-Making: 1964-1974
PDF
A Developing Pattern Of Unenumerated Individual Rights In The United States Constitution
PDF
Effect Of Direction Of Rotation And Head Position On Judgment On The Inverted Vertical
PDF
An Examination Of Economic Expectations As A Determinant Of Political Behavior
PDF
A Case Study Of The Impact Of Research Money Upon The Administration Of The University Of Washington
PDF
A Critical Test Of The Dominant Motive Of High Need-Approval Persons
Asset Metadata
Creator
Clary, Bruce Bennett
(author)
Core Title
The Political And Social Impact Of Aircraft Noise On Four Urban Communities
Degree
Doctor of Philosophy
Degree Program
Political Science
Publisher
University of Southern California
(original),
University of Southern California. Libraries
(digital)
Tag
OAI-PMH Harvest,political science, general
Language
English
Contributor
Digitized by ProQuest
(provenance)
Advisor
Warren, Robert (
committee chair
), Conolley, Edward S. (
committee member
), Greene, Thomas H. (
committee member
)
Permanent Link (DOI)
https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c18-720837
Unique identifier
UC11356427
Identifier
7426019.pdf (filename),usctheses-c18-720837 (legacy record id)
Legacy Identifier
7426019.pdf
Dmrecord
720837
Document Type
Dissertation
Rights
Clary, Bruce Bennett
Type
texts
Source
University of Southern California
(contributing entity),
University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses
(collection)
Access Conditions
The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the au...
Repository Name
University of Southern California Digital Library
Repository Location
USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus, Los Angeles, California 90089, USA
Tags
political science, general