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Understanding Rural Identities and Environmental Policy Attitudes in America

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 November 2021

Emily P. Diamond Open the ORCID record for Emily P. Diamond [Opens in a new window]
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Abstract

Attitudinal differences between urban and rural voters in America have been in the spotlight in recent years and engaging rural populations politically has been growing in importance, particularly since the 2016 presidential election. Meanwhile, social and geographic sorting is increasing the salience of a rural identity that drives distinct policy preferences. While recent research has examined how rural identities drive social and economic policy preferences, rural Americans are also particularly relevant to the fate of environmental policy. Farmers, ranchers, and forest landowners manage huge portions of American lands and watersheds and are important stakeholders in the implementation of environmental policies. Despite this, the environmental policy preferences of rural Americans have received little attention from the research community. This study fills a gap in the literature by investigating how collective identities among rural Americans drive environmental policy preferences. Through eight focus groups and thirty-five interviews with rural voters across America (total n=105), this study explores how four components of rural American identity—connection to nature, resentment/disenfranchisement, rootedness, and self-reliance—inform specific rural perspectives on environmental policy. The findings have implications for how to best design, communicate, and implement environmental policies in a way that can better engage rural Americans on this issue.

Type
Environmental Politics
Information
Perspectives on Politics , Volume 21 , Issue 2: Special Section: Green Political Science , June 2023 , pp. 502 - 518
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the American Political Science Association

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Footnotes

A list of permanent links to Supplemental Materials provided by the author precedes the References section.

The author would like to thank the co-investigators of this project—Robert Bonnie, Frederick Mayer, and Elizabeth Rowe; Jay Campbell and Claire Graebner at Hart Research Associates and Lori Weigel at New Bridge Strategy, who helped design, execute, and analyze the focus groups; as well as the students who contributed to the data collection and analysis: Emma Fulop, Emma Lietz-Bilecky, Shane O’Neal, Sarah Lanier, James Ray, and Sarina Weiss. She would also like to acknowledge the Hewlett Foundation, the Wilburforce Foundation, and the Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions for providing funding.

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