Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: 147 Document Number: C23441
Notes:
Reports on other topics featuring interviews with rural Americans can be found at www.wkkf.org., This report is part of a project seeking to understand how various groups perceive rural America, its challenges and strengths. "Perceptions of rural America" looks at how certain news organizations report on the rural population. Researchers analyzed the events and issues making news, the sources quoted, and the opinions these sources expressed about the current and future state of rural America. Researchers conducted a content analysis of news coverage during the six-month period from Jan. 1, 2002, through June 30, 2002, in a sample of major newspapers, news magazines and television networks.
35pgs, The idea that citizens' support for environmental policies depends on their economic interest and the community that one lives in, has been debated extensively in the environmental attitudes literature. However, this literature has not differentiated between separate policy dimensions that concern measures that affect specific groups in different ways. This paper differentiates between a nature/agriculture dimension that divides those who prioritize the agrarian interest from those who prioritize the protection of nature and a climate/energy dimension that divides those who prioritize industrial interest from those who prioritize fighting climate change, using a new survey in the Netherlands (N = 11,327). This two-dimensional model meets three criteria: scalability, validity, and utility. Scalability is shown by factor analysis and Mokken scaling. Validity is shown by regression analyses that show that whether one lives in a rural or an urban community predicts one's position on the nature/agriculture dimension and that one's financial security predicts one's position on the climate/energy dimension. The utility is shown by regression analyses where the two dimensions are used to predict voting behavior. The Green Party voters favor nature and climate protection, the Liberal Party voters have the opposite views, the Christian-Democrats favor agricultural interests and the Freedom Party favor industrial interests.
