Smart Growth at the Ballot Box: Understanding Voting on Affordable Housing and Land Management Referendums

Abstract

This study investigates voter decision-making on two smart-growth components: land preservation and affordable housing. We seek to understand how voters make concurrent decisions about unpaired smart-growth components at the ballot box. Previous studies of smart growth, affordable housing, and environmental preservation have focused primarily on describing the attitudes and traits of voters on these policies, utilize aggregate voting outcomes, or are case studies of single towns in which there is a fairly homogenous group of residents either supporting or opposing the policy. We draw on a unique data set to investigate the different covariates of attitudes for environmental preservation and affordable housing: an exit poll of voters in the 2016 Rhode Island General Election on bond referendums for environmental preservation and affordable housing. We find that the coalition for smart growth that includes both land preservation and affordable housing is undermined by views of minorities and the poor as undeserving.

Voter support for bond referenda: Does it matter if costs are presented as aggregate vs. personal costs?

“…Starting with the former, given Democrats' greater support for government spending (and Republicans' opposition toward raising taxes), we expected that Republicans would be more affected by increasing costs framed as personal tax increases than their Democratic counterparts. With regards to the latter, prior evidence suggests that voters are generally more supportive of land preservation ballot questions than affordable housing ballot questions (Pearson‐Merkowitz & Lang, 2020) and so we expect that cost responsiveness will be lower for land preservation bonds than for affordable housing bonds. We have no a priori expectation regarding the Streets and Sidewalks Fund bond, however.…”

“…In contrast, recent research suggests that voters are fairly unresponsive to aggregate bond prices, with other ballot attributes like the number of bonds on the ballot, the bond order, and the project the bond funds having a larger effect on voters' support (Bechard, Lang, & Pearson-Merkowitz, Forthcoming). Collectively, this suggests that bond questions framed as personal tax increases should engender less support than bond questions posed as aggregate dollar amounts (Brunner et al, 2018(Brunner et al, , 2021 and that this effect may vary depending on the project type the bond funds (e.g., Bechard, Lang, & Pearson-Merkowitz, Forthcoming;Pearson-Merkowitz & Lang, 2020).…”

The aftermath of ballot box success and failure: evidence from land preservation referendums

“…Second, a large literature exists on the determinants of voting outcomes for open space preservation proposals on state and local ballots that help inform our control variables and expectations (e.g. Heintzelman et al 2013;Altonji et al 2016;Prendergast et al 2019;Pearson-Merkowitz and Lang 2020;Banzhaf et al 2010;Kotchen and Powers 2006). In the coterminous USA, from 1988 to 2012, 1,031 municipalities held 1,640 referendums to acquire and preserve open spaces.…”

“…In order to test our hypotheses, we use data from municipal referendums for open space preservation following a large literature on open space preservation proposals on state and local ballots (Altonji et al 2016; Banzhaf et al 2010; Heintzelman et al 2013, Kotchen and Powers 2006; Sundberg 2006; Nelson et al 2007, 2013; Lowry and Scott Krummenacher 2017; Lang et al 2018; Lowry 2018; Prendergast et al 2019; Pearson-Merkowitz and Lang 2020; Lang and Pearson-Merkowitz 2022). We use data from the Trust for Public Land’s LandVote database (TPL).…”

“…2016; Prendergast et al. 2019; Pearson-Merkowitz and Lang 2020; Banzhaf et al. 2010; Kotchen and Powers 2006).…”