Abstract

Vehicle dismantling facilities play a critical role in recycling metals from end-of-life vehicles (ELVs). However, these facilities can impose environmental burdens on nearby communities, including noise, air pollution, and groundwater contamination, especially when operations do not comply with legal standards. While the siting of hazardous facilities has been widely studied through an environmental justice (EJ) lens, vehicle dismantlers have received limited attention. This study examines these patterns in California, highlighting their unique characteristics and implications for social and environmental equity. Using a Heteroskedastic Binary Logit model to capture local differences, this thesis shows that vehicle dismantlers are more likely to be located in census tracts with higher levels of social disadvantage, although not disproportionately in low-income areas. Composite variables, such as the CalEnviroScreen score and components of the Social Vulnerability Index, are important for predicting the presence of dismantlers, linking these facilities to broader patterns of environmental and social vulnerability. While results do not explicitly find racial disparities, findings suggest that vehicle dismantlers are concentrated in highly polluted areas, which are often disproportionately inhabited by disadvantaged populations, which raises environmental injustice concerns. Conversely, population density is also a significant factor, which is inversely correlated with the presence of vehicle dismantlers. These facilities often require substantial land, which is expensive in densely populated urban areas. A better understanding of the factors influencing the siting of these facilities is useful to craft better policies to address social and environmental injustices, promote sustainability and enhance social equity.