(iPoster) Windshield Politics: Reconceptualizing the Not in My Backyard (NIMBY) Phenomenon

• In Event: Poster Session: Science, Technology, and Environmental Politics

Abstract

What constitutes someone’s “backyard”? Does it include their block? Does it include their workplace? Or perhaps the places where they shop? How about the streets in between? When scholars discuss the Not in My Backyard (NIMBY) phenomena they often narrowly focus on a stagnate interpretation of this place. This study extends this phenomenon to include the places people typically drive through on their daily commute. I coin the phrase “windshield politics,” to capture the idea that certain regularly attended locations serve as anchors for exposure to policy implementations. Commonly attended anchors frequently serve as the boundaries by which individuals perceive their local communities. While there are numerous locations that can be considered community defining anchors, two prominent anchors include places where people work and shop for their everyday needs. These places serve as prominent anchor locations because individuals must attend these types of locations on a regular basis to attain resources to fulfill basic needs. What do people see when they drive to these places? And, does the view through their windshield impact their political beliefs? If so, in what way?

Americans are spending an increasing amount of time in their cars. According to the Foundation for Traffic Safety, Americans in 2025 spent an average of 369 hours in their cars every year as compared to 292 hours in 2015. Consequently, someone’s “backyard” has likely dramatically expanded. However, it hasn’t expanded so much that the entire county or (in some instances) city is included within this conception. This more localized version of NIMBY is the focal point of this paper. Of course, there are many things that people pass that may be politically salient, but one that has increasingly gained a lot of attention from both politicians (Los Angeles Times 2025; Bureau of Land Management 2024) and pundits (CNN 2025; Fox 2024) is solar farms. Literature has shown that these tend to disproportionately be placed in communities of color (e.g. O’Shaughnessy et al. 2023), this study considers whether those same communities are disproportionately exposed to these same solar panels when they commute to-and-from work and key shopping locations.

After geolocating solar farms, Walmarts, and the three largest employers in every North Carolina county, I calculate common driving routes with a real-time traffic network. Specifically, I use this network to calculate the fastest drive time routes from the center of each county to the nearest Walmart. This process provides me with varied routes across the state which I use as the initial observations for my “windshield politics” measure. I observationally test the implications of this measure by examining if communities of color are disproportionately exposed to solar panels while commuting along these routes. I do so by observing how the expected number of solar farms within two miles of a route changes based on changes in the nearby racial demographics. Ultimately, I find that communities of color are exposed to solar panels at greater rates than we would expect based on solar panel counts at higher levels of aggregation, suggesting these communities are not only more likely to find solar panels in their cities, but they are more likely to see them every single day while attempting to obtain their basic necessities. I check the robustness of this measure by calculating routes using the same real-time traffic network from the center of each county to the top three largest employers in each county. Not only does this demonstrate the robustness of my approach, but it also extends my theory of “windshield politics” to the workplace.

I test the implications of “windshield politics” with a unique experimental design. In the experiment, I randomly assign respondents to view one of two video treatments. Respondents in both treatment groups watch a dashcam video taken in Charlotte, North Carolina. One treatment group will watch an edited version of the video which contains an AI generated solar array visible in part of the video. The other group will watch the unedited video which does not contain this solar array. I also randomly assign respondents to read a prompt saying that the video was either recorded by someone going to Walmart or to work. The key dependent variable is whether the respondent supports solar panel implementation after they watch the video they were assigned. I expect the visual pollution element of solar panels to serve as a triggering effect around respondent views of renewable energy. I therefore expect Republican respondents in the solar treatment group to report heightened opposition to the proposed policy compared to Republican respondents in the other group.

Author

• Jasper Neath, Purdue University