IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/comdev/v46y2015i4p312-328.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The hope-reality gap: rural community officials' perceptions of unconventional shale development as a means to increase local population and revitalize resource extraction

Author

Listed:
  • Tony J. Silva
  • Jessica A. Crowe

Abstract

Here, we examine the perceptions of unconventional shale development held by city and county officials in the New Albany shale play in Southern Illinois and Northwest Kentucky. We conducted semi-structured interviews with 18 officials before development occurred. Twelve supported introducing shale development to their communities, four were opposed, and two were undecided. Many view it as a way to overcome an economic vulnerability of their areas, population decline, by boosting the local population. Several also believe shale development will strengthen their communities' economic specialization and social identity related to resource extraction. Although leaders held high hopes for it, most of their communities' economic vulnerabilities are structural and likely cannot be improved by introducing shale development. This gap between hope and reality suggests that many community officials will be disappointed with major development projects - many of which are portrayed as economic boons - as they often cannot fulfill officials' high hopes.

Suggested Citation

  • Tony J. Silva & Jessica A. Crowe, 2015. "The hope-reality gap: rural community officials' perceptions of unconventional shale development as a means to increase local population and revitalize resource extraction," Community Development, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 46(4), pages 312-328, October.
  • Handle: RePEc:taf:comdev:v:46:y:2015:i:4:p:312-328
    DOI: 10.1080/15575330.2015.1061678
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/15575330.2015.1061678
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/15575330.2015.1061678?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Malin, Stephanie A. & Mayer, Adam & Crooks, James L. & McKenzie, Lisa & Peel, Jennifer L. & Adgate, John L., 2019. "Putting on partisan glasses: Political identity, quality of life, and oil and gas production in Colorado," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 129(C), pages 738-748.
    2. Brian E. Whitacre & Dylan L. Johnston & David W. Shideler & Notie H. Lansford, 2020. "The influence of oil and natural gas employment on local retail spending: evidence from Oklahoma panel data," The Annals of Regional Science, Springer;Western Regional Science Association, vol. 64(1), pages 133-157, February.
    3. Mayer, Adam, 2018. "The Fiscal Impacts of Energy: Perspectives from local governments in the Mountain West, USA," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 122(C), pages 186-193.
    4. Adam Mayer, 2018. "Community economic identity and colliding treadmills in oil and gas governance," Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences, Springer;Association of Environmental Studies and Sciences, vol. 8(1), pages 1-12, March.
    5. Mayer, Adam, 2017. "Political identity and paradox in oil and gas policy: A study of regulatory exaggeration in Colorado, US," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 109(C), pages 452-459.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:comdev:v:46:y:2015:i:4:p:312-328. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/RCOD20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.