Citizen complaints, regulatory violations, and their implications for swine operations in Illinois

Using a unique Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) livestock inspection data set, this paper presents an extensive empirical investigation of relationships between citizen complaints, swine production and community characteristics, EPA inspections, and regulatory violations. Our results suggest that facility and community characteristics have a relationship with citizen complaints. Also, complaint-initiated inspections are more efficient than regularly scheduled ones in terms of regulatory violation detection rates. Additionally, EPA inspectors and inspections influence a facility's compliance behavior. Except for building type and swine inventory intensity, facility and community characteristics are not associated with a facility's probability of regulatory violation.