Framing affordable housing: an experimental test of changing attitudes

Is it possible to persuade voters to support more housing in their communities and affordable housing policies at the state and local levels? Generally, residents living close to proposed developments are more likely to oppose them, giving rise to the ‘NIMBY’ (‘Not in My Back Yard’) label. Previous research suggests institutional context rather than attitudes explains most of the geographic variation in regulatory barriers to new housing. This study investigates the possibility of changing voter attitudes towards housing and housing policies with a pair of preregistered survey experiments conducted on adult residents of New Hampshire, one of the most tightly regulated states for new housing. We discover two forms of messaging that move public opinion on state and local housing policy and find typical, anti-development attitudes among homeowners, but not renters, when it comes to proposed developments in respondents’ own neighbourhoods.