NIMBY, YIMBY, or something else? Geographies of public perceptions of shale gas development in the Marcellus Shale

Chad Zanocco,Darrick Evensen,Richard Stedman,Christopher E Clarke,Hilary Boudet

doi:10.1088/1748-9326/ab7d01

Abstract

Much research exists on how social-psychological factors (e.g. political ideology), proximity to development, and contextual factors (e.g. state in which one resides) drive public attitudes toward various types of energy development. Yet, scholars have only recently begun to explore how these factors interact to create unique geographies of perception that defy the simplistic explanations suggested by not-in-my-backyard or yes-in-my-backyard labels. Using precisely geocoded well and survey data, we explore the interplay of political ideology, proximity and place in the context of public attitudes toward unconventional oil and natural gas development (UOGD) in the Marcellus Shale region of southern New York and northern Pennsylvania. For our full sample and similar to findings from recent national surveys on attitudes toward energy development, we found that respondents closer to UOGD were more supportive of it, a relationship that was moderated by political ideology with liberals or moderates located closer to UOGD more supportive than those located further away. However, when we examined these moderation effects within states, a different story emerged. For New York respondents, proximity did not appear to have a differential effect on conservatives vs. liberals/moderates. However, for Pennsylvania respondents, we observed opposing effects: conservatives were more supportive further away from development, while liberals/moderates were more supportive closer to development. Our results thus both reaffirm and challenge existing scholarship, highlighting the potential for middle range theorizing about geographies of perception in energy development.

Highlights

Much research exists on how social-psychological factors, proximity to development, and contextual factors drive public attitudes toward various types of energy development (Devine-Wright 2005, Boudet et al 2014, 2018, Clarke et al 2015, Evensen and Stedman 2016, Junod et al 2018, Boudet 2019)
Borrowing from Haggerty et al’s (2018) concept of ‘impact geographies’ and similar to the idea of ‘risk perception shadows’ (Stoffle et al 1993), we define ‘geographies of perception’ as spatially bounded areas with unique combinations of historical, contextual, experiential and political factors that interact to shape public attitudes toward energy development. We explore this phenomenon in the context of public attitudes toward unconventional oil and natural gas development (UOGD), colloquially referred to as hydraulic fracturing or fracking,7 in
We identified 34 municipalities in southern New York and 17 municipalities in Pennsylvania located within the Marcellus Shale region from which we drew a stratified random sample of households

Summary

Introduction

Much research exists on how social-psychological factors (e.g. political ideology), proximity to development, and contextual factors (e.g. state in which one resides) drive public attitudes toward various types of energy development (Devine-Wright 2005, Boudet et al 2014, 2018, Clarke et al 2015, Evensen and Stedman 2016, Junod et al 2018, Boudet 2019). Borrowing from Haggerty et al’s (2018) concept of ‘impact geographies’ and similar to the idea of ‘risk perception shadows’ (Stoffle et al 1993), we define ‘geographies of perception’ as spatially bounded areas with unique combinations of historical, contextual, experiential and political factors that interact to shape public attitudes toward energy development. We explore this phenomenon in the context of public attitudes toward unconventional oil and natural gas development (UOGD), colloquially referred to as hydraulic fracturing or fracking, in the Marcellus Shale region of southern New York and northern Pennsylvania.. We take a more nuanced approach to studying public attitudes toward UOGD by considering how political polarization about shale gas development varies by both proximity and place

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Conclusion