Voters in California counties have been asked to approve transportation sales taxes on over 75 different occasions, and according to the Legislative Analyst, revenues from local option transportation sales taxes accounted for 15% of all revenues raised statewide for transportation during fiscal year 2005/2006. While many analyses examining public support for such taxes have been undertaken using aggregate-level data, little work has been done examining the individual decision to support a transportation sales tax at the polls. In this paper, we argue that an individual's propensity to approve or deny a sales tax extension for transportation purposes is a function of a set of attitudinal and self-interest factors. Using a two-county survey, we find that opposition to the renewal of the existing sales tax is centered among anti-tax, political conservative residents who do not trust elected officials. Furthermore, we find that while the two counties border one another, the impact of the attitudinal and self-interest factors in the model vary significantly by county. The findings are important for transportation practitioners who face future transportation sales tax elections, and for political scientists who are attempting to develop a generalizable set of factors which explain public support for transportation sales taxes.
Social constructionists have produced a rich theoretical and empirical literature on the rise and fall of public issues. By focusing exclusively on claims‐making behavior in a micro interactive context, social constructionists, in the tradition of Spector and Kitsuse, generally have rejected efforts to link claims‐making to antecedent variables. Thus they often treat claims‐making participants as activities, devoid of motives, meanings, and intentions. In this paper, ideology and interest are offered as antecedent variables to claims‐making and as the critical factors which determine why some claims are more marketable than others. Interest and ideology also are examined as both subjective and structural/cultural phenomena.
Voters in California counties have been asked to approve transportation sales taxes on over 75 different occasions, and according to the Legislative Analyst, revenues from local option transportation sales taxes accounted for 15% of all revenues raised statewide for transportation during fiscal year 2005/2006. While many analyses examining public support for such taxes have been undertaken using aggregate-level data, little work has been done examining the individual decision to support a transportation sales tax at the polls. In this paper, we argue that an individual's propensity to approve or deny a sales tax extension for transportation purposes is a function of a set of attitudinal and self-interest factors. Using a two-county survey, we find that opposition to the renewal of the existing sales tax is centered among anti-tax, political conservative residents who do not trust elected officials. Furthermore, we find that while the two counties border one another, the impact of the attitudinal and self-interest factors in the model vary significantly by county. The findings are important for transportation practitioners who face future transportation sales tax elections, and for political scientists who are attempting to develop a generalizable set of factors which explain public support for transportation sales taxes.
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