Rural Consciousness and Its Heterogeneous Associations with Political Behavior

• In Event: Political Identity, Partisanship, and Preferences

Abstract

Although rural Americans’ sense of place-based consciousness has been an influential
explanation for their right-wing politics, recent studies show rural consciousness is only
weakly associated with Republican partisanship and conservatism. I show this
incongruity is explained by the heterogeneous associations of rural consciousness to
political behavior. Among politically engaged Americans, rural consciousness is
associated with right-wing political identification and economic conservatism. Among
politically disengaged Americans, however, rural consciousness is associated with leftwing identification and economic liberalism. This heterogeneity emerges due to the
downweighing of instrumental, material concerns among politically engaged citizens
relative to symbolic, identity-based considerations. Thus, how rural consciousness
translates into political behavior is contingent on the motivations citizens bring to bear
in political decision-making. In this way, past studies have overlooked how strong rural
consciousness’s associations with right-wing political behavior are for politically
engaged Americans, as well as its moderate associations with left-wing politics among
politically disengaged Americans.

Author

• Trent Ollerenshaw, University of Houston