A legacy of recreancy?: Perceptions of routinized governmental failure in Jackson, MS

In late August of 2022, Jackson, MS experienced severe flooding leaving approximately 150,000 without access to drinking water. Compounding this acute event is a decades long water crisis, often attributed to government neglect and mismanagement of water services. The chronic technological disaster (water crisis) worsened by a significant acute hazard event (the 2022 flood) in a place that regularly experiences flooding (persistent acute hazard events) provides a context amenable to investigate the nuances of the concept of recreancy—loosely understood as perceptions of the failure of an institution(s) to fulfill the obligations entrusted to them by the public. We ask: Do residents in Jackson expect governmental failure during environmental crises? A survey of 511 residents measured attitudes toward local government in the context of four dimensions of recreancy—responsibility, effectiveness, confidence, and trust. These dimensions were analyzed to understand how perceptions of local government affect resident confidence that water quality would improve in the future. Analysis finds two facets of recreancy, trust and confidence, held strong associative relationships with confidence that water quality will improve in the future. These findings suggest that, despite historical mismanagement of water services, residents are divided in their optimism about future water quality. This study contributes to emerging literatures focused on compound disasters and provides a nuanced understanding of public valuation of institutions charged with safeguarding public safety and health during crises. This study also continues the conceptual, theoretical, and methodological study of the role of institutions in hazard risk production. • Perceptions of institutional failure become more salient in the context of the enduring and acute environmental challenges. • For residents, there was a bipolar expectation about future of water quality due to trust and confidence in local government. • Ordinal modeling techniques can be a more effective statistical method due to the limitations of OLS regression. • Findings suggest environmental harms will persist in Jackson, MS under both normal conditions and extreme events.