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Interpreting amenities, envisioning the future: common ground and conflict in North Carolina’s rural coastal communities

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Abstract

This paper contributes to ongoing discussions about the implications of rural change and amenity migration for members of diverse rural communities. We engage with recent amenity migration and political ecology literature that focuses on social constructions of nature and landscapes, and how these constructions affect the attitudes and opinions of community members. We use our case study of a mail-based survey in Down East, North Carolina to suggest that the ways in which people conceptualize the particular ‘natures’ and landscapes of a place matters in terms of shaping people’s attitudes with respect to ongoing processes of change. We find that people’s opinions about environment, culture, and land use are often superficially similar but that when conflicts arise or particular actions are considered, substantial differences in people’s underlying conceptual frameworks are revealed. In particular we find that despite widespread shared appreciation of the environment and culture Down East, differing interpretations of these key terms lead to potential misunderstandings and land use planning challenges.

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Notes

  1. Population figures are by township. Straits Township includes the communities of Straits, Bettie, Otway, and Gloucester.

  2. The project design received input from a cross-section of community members, including those on either side of the moratorium debate.

  3. Although it is common practice in the social sciences to treat Likert-scale questions as interval (numeric) data, here we treat the Likert scale categories as nominal data (using the Chi-square test to compare numbers of people in agreement with particular statements) to avoid assuming that respondents would all assign the same meanings or numerical weights to the response categories ranging from ‘strongly disagree’ to ‘strongly agree.’ However, we do report the means in order to give an idea of the strength of opinions for each response.

  4. These categories were the answer options to our survey question “Including yourself, how many generations of your family have lived Down East, either full-time or part-time?”

  5. Given the number of total addresses Down East, our sample size of 483 produces a margin of error of approximately ±5% at a 95% confidence level (Rea and Parker 2005). Non-response among different groups of people was fairly even, although Carteret County residents made up a slightly smaller proportion of responses than would be expected. While 66% of all surveys were mailed to Carteret County residents, they comprised approximately 61% of responses.

  6. As a reviewer of this paper correctly pointed out, it is worth keeping in mind that statistical significance does not necessarily translate into practical significance (e.g., some of the statistically significant differences we find with respect to opinions on development and other issues may not necessarily translate into different votes or other political actions).

  7. Proportional to the total number of surveys returned by each group.

  8. An area of Carteret County substantially developed with condominium complexes, many of which are owned as vacation properties.

  9. People who were not born Down East; outsiders.

  10. A mobile home park in mainland Down East.

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Acknowledgments

This research was funded by North Carolina Sea Grant and the Duke University Marine Lab, and Meletis’ participation was supported by the University of Northern British Columbia. We are grateful to the many volunteers who assisted with administering our survey: Sean Crowder, Caroline Good, Bill Herring, Alice Ren, Katherine Straus, Lori Troutman, and Danielle Waples. We thank Myriah Cornwell, Amy Freitag, Nicholas Mallos, and Cristina Villanueva for comments on an early draft. We especially acknowledge the interest and support of a number of people Down East who have provided guidance throughout the project, in particular Karen Amspacher and Gail Cannon. Finally, we thank the many people who completed and returned our survey.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Duke University Marine Laboratory, Beaufort, NC, USA

    Noëlle Boucquey, Lisa M. Campbell, Gabriel Cumming, Carla Norwood & Joshua Stoll

  2. University of Northern British Columbia, Prince George, BC, Canada

    Zoë A. Meletis

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  1. Noëlle Boucquey
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  2. Lisa M. Campbell
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  3. Gabriel Cumming
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  4. Zoë A. Meletis
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  5. Carla Norwood
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  6. Joshua Stoll
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Correspondence to Noëlle Boucquey.

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Boucquey, N., Campbell, L.M., Cumming, G. et al. Interpreting amenities, envisioning the future: common ground and conflict in North Carolina’s rural coastal communities. GeoJournal 77, 83–101 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10708-010-9387-1

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