Preferences for Economic and Environmental Goals in Rural Community Development in the Western United States*

Abstract

Rural residents in the United States do not always agree on local development priorities, yet understanding and accounting for their preferences is a step towards more effective and equitable community development. We use survey data spanning different types of rural Intermountain West communities to gauge residents' preference weights for economic and environmental rural development goals. Given that community tenure and age are often related to development preferences, respondents are divided into three groups based on these factors using a classification tree approach. Long-term residents (>36 percent of life spent in the community) have the strongest economic preferences, while older newcomers have the strongest environmental preferences. The Leti heterogeneity index reveals that long-term residents also displayed the greatest homogeneity of preferences. Ordered probit analysis shows that goal preferences are also related to sex, education, household income, community financial security, and the share of county income derived from wealth assets. These findings provide a more nuanced and methods-based understanding of residential tenure in a community and its relationship to development attitudes across a variety of rural place types, all valuable information for rural community and economic development practitioners.

Disrupting Political Polarization: The Role of Politics in Explanations of Farm Loss in Southern Wisconsin☆

“…In addition to complicating the rural/urban dichotomy, sociology and anthropology literature also disentangles the links between farmers and anti‐environmentalism or anti‐government sentiment. Whether or not rural people support environmental policy is influenced by such factors as employment, age, “newcomer” versus “old timer” status, attachment to place, and survey question phrasing (Armstrong and Stedman 2019; Bonnie, Diamond, and Rowe 2020; Diamond 2021; Freudenburg 1991; Ulrich‐Schad et al 2022). Some agricultural organizations lobby against pesticide regulation or other environmental protections, but other farmers and organizations promote and practice sustainable agriculture (Yoshida, Flint, and Dolan 2018).…”