The Forgotten Rural: Community Attachment and Satisfaction among Frontier Residents

• In Event: 476 - Section on Community and Urban Sociology Paper Session. Challenges to Community Social Organization in a Changing America

Abstract

The conceptualization of community measures such as community satisfaction, attachment, and the relationship between them, is one of the longest standing debates in community sentiment research. One of the primary questions in community research has been to determine how space or population density between rural and urban areas effects community sentiment. Though many explanations have been postulated about the rural-urban continuum, there is not conclusive evidence on how space and population density influence rural residents in frontier areas that are extremely remote. Using a rich dataset from the highly rural state of Montana (N=3,510), this study examines the relationship between community satisfaction and attachment measures across the highly rural to urban continuum. Our findings suggest that there is a sleeper affect showing that once socio economic and community characteristics are controlled for there is a significant and negative relationship between community attachment and satisfaction for residents living in frontier communities. We suggest that the implications of not using extremely isolated rural residents in datasets leaves out the importance of spatial effects in the community satisfaction and attachment debate and argue for more research to be done in order to understand the differences that can occur across the rural-urban continuum.

Authors

• Matthew L McKnight, Brigham Young University

• Scott R. Sanders, Brigham Young University

• Dane Andersen, Brigham Young University