The Symbolic Politics of Housing: Effects of Exposure to Short-Form Videos About Cities and Developers

• In Event: Development, Redistribution and Policy in Comparative Perspective

Abstract

Voter support for anti-development policies contributes to America’s acute housing shortage. Prevailing theories of support for anti-development policies emphasize NIMBYism (opposition to housing nearby) and homeowners’ self-interest. We offer an additional explanation drawing on symbolic politics theory. This theory argues that voters have positive or negative affect towards various symbols, often developed early in life; later, they evaluate policies based on their affect towards relevant symbols.
In the first stage of our project, we showed, in line with the theory, that affect towards salient symbols powerfully correlates with anti-development preferences. First, homeowner-renter gaps in support for increasing density disappear when accounting for affect towards cities. Next,experiments show that affect towards developers, government entities, and new housing’s residents also explain anti-development preferences when policies make these symbols visible; homeownership and NIMBYism often fail to predict patterns we find. Finally, consistent with a role for socialization, historical public opinion data suggests that birth cohort helps explain affect towards cities. Building on this work, our new study estimates the causal effect of exposure to short videos that convey positive or negative messages about developers or big cities, respectively, on affect toward developers (cities) and support for by-right development and upzoning for apartments.

Author

• Christopher S Elmendorf, University of California, Davis
  Presenting Author