Why some places don’t seem to matter: Socioeconomic, cultural and political determinants of place resentment

Abstract

Inhabitants of rural and peripheral areas in advanced democracies display higher levels of place resentment. They feel that their area is ignored by political elites, does not get its fair share of resources, and its values are disregarded by inhabitants of other areas. Place resentment is recognized in the literature as perceptions of socioeconomic, cultural and political inequalities. Existing quantitative work studied associations with objective local socioeconomic deprivation but not with cultural and political context characteristics. Based on geo-coded survey data from the Netherlands, this study shows that place resentment is related to spatial inequalities in unemployment and knowledge economy size, but also to linguistic distance between local dialect and Standard Dutch, and proximity to living places of national MPs. Adequately understanding place resentment thus requires not only studying socioeconomic local contexts, but also a deeper understanding of the role of cultural differences and inequalities in political representation between places.