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Phase I Lake Superior Community Awareness, Review, and Development Project (CARD): United States Communities
Last updated: 01/16/2009
Introduction
The overall goals of the CARD initiative were (a) to assess, increase knowledge, and awareness of sustainability especially as it relates to local issues, and (b) to foster improved decision-making that integrates social, economic, and environmental considerations, in thirteen communities within the Lake Superior Basin. To begin to meet these goals, the Developing Sustainability Committee (DSC) of the Lake Superior Work Group (SWG) for the Lake Superior Binational Program surveyed individuals from nine basin communities on the U.S. side of the lake as a complement to similar efforts conducted in Canada.
CARD Phase I involved the use of surveys to learn about local knowledge of, attitudes toward, and decision-making and behavior regarding issues embedded in the Lakewide Management Plan (LaMP) for Lake Superior. Personal relationships were established with contact individuals positioned in community civic organizations, chambers of commerce, school districts, religious organizations, and local units of government representing more than a hundred organizations spread across basin communities. This procedure produced a range potential respondent-lists in each community. In the end, the contractor sent 955 surveys to people who agreed to distribute them at community meetings and take care of their collection. Of these surveys, only 280 surveys were returned despite repeated calls for follow-through. Nonetheless, this figure represents a 29% response rate which exceeds the typical pattern associated with other large scale public opinion surveys using volunteer respondents.
Concurrent with efforts to identify and define the sampling frame for the Phase I CARD survey, existing surveys previously used in the basin were examined to determine the extent to which the areas of interest to the Lake Superior Binational Program had already been assessed; analysis of more than a dozen other instruments (e.g., Cantrill, Potter, & Stephenson, 2000) revealed little if any direct overlap with the CARD focus. To that end, the intent here was to produce a survey that could meet a number of objectives: providing a demographic profile for the sample, allowing respondents to exercise free-choice in qualitative descriptions of what they considered most important, isolating discrete (i.e., quantitative) reactions to various LaMP related issues, and assessing differences between knowledge of and concerns over a range of environmental issues. After several iterations of instrument development, pilot testing confirmed respondents could complete the survey in 10 to 15 minutes.
Credit: J.G. Cantrill
Methods, Tools, and Data
Once all data had been collected, the contractor coded the qualitative responses using an inductive coding scheme which, along with the original quantitative responses, were input into a spreadsheet for statistical analysis. Since the CARD survey included a number of free response items that had to be transformed into discrete categories for analysis, special mention should be made of those coding procedures. In this case, established procedures were used to inspect the qualitative responses for the presence of dominant themes (Strauss & Corbin, 1990). This involves a process of making comparisons between individuals' responses and within respondents' answers to questions. The approach is quite flexible in that it permits a specific analysis of phrases or single words in order to isolate and compare dominant ideas and topics that can be assigned different codes that may be amenable to statistical analysis. Additional procedures were then used to determine the extent to which dominant themes cluster together or are related to one another in systematic ways (e.g., Cantrill, 1998). Thus, the coding process resulted in our being able to generate a more useful understanding of how respondents differ from one another as well as what they consider to be the most salient aspects of their lives in their respective communities.
Since the process of inductively coding open-ended responses to survey questions may be unduly influenced by the relatively unique experiences of the individual creating the coding scheme and applying it across a range of responses, it becomes important to assess the reliability of the process. This is typically accomplished by taking 20% of the responses for each qualitatively-oriented question and independently coding them again using the scheme that was originally created. Statistically compensating for chance similarities, the amount of matches observed when comparing the two separate codings provides a measure or inter-rater reliability that may be interpreted as akin to a simple correlation with higher numbers representing higher levels of faith in the coding scheme. In this case, our analysis revealed all codings exceeding an inter-rater reliability score of .83.
In order to appropriately interpret findings from the CARD Phase I project, it is important to understand the nature of the respondents we surveyed. As is often the case with large-scale surveys such as this, the sample of responses and opinion we base our conclusions upon exhibits a good deal of self-selection tendencies. That is, to the extent we surveyed members of intact community groups whose affiliation was voluntary, and insofar as the members of those groups often chose not to complete the CARD survey or portions thereof, we might suspect that our respondents might significantly differ from their community peers. In particular, it is reasonable to assume that our respondents were perhaps more civic-minded or more concerned about the state of the local or regional environment than those who chose not to participate.
Credit: J.G. Cantrill
Discussion of Results
Respondents identified a wide range of general and specific issues associated with economic, environmental and social conditions when asked to identify the three most pressing issues facing their particular community. In this case (and accounting for the 6% of the sample that did not list
any issue), the most pressing community issues facing all of the basin communities dealt with
economic concerns (41%). The second most frequently mentioned set of issues revolved around the idea of
social concerns (31%). And the least frequently (28%) mentioned category of issues focused on
environmental concerns. In this our findings match the typical observation by pollsters that the environment does not figure prominently in citizens? perceptions of problems unless they specifically primed to consider such issues.
When respondents were asked to focus specifically on the environment, we requested that they identify the most important environmental issue affecting (a)
themselves or their households, (b) their communities, (c) their state, and (d) the Lake Superior basin as a whole. When focusing on themselves and their households, respondents most often identified water-related concerns (40%) as the most pressing types of personal environmental issues. At the
community level, the general issue of watershed management (38%) again was most salient to our respondents. Respondents also focused on problems associated with water (32%) when citing the most important environmental issues at the level of their particular
state. Finally, when oriented toward environmental issues most pressing across the entire
Lake Superior basin, watershed management concerns was by far-and-away the single most salient set of issues that came to mind (55%).
The survey also examined a number of more specific issues of interest to the SWG. For example, more than 60% of our sample indicated that they generally conserved oil, gas, or electrical energy yet a full 44% of our respondents reported only sometimes or rarely conserving water. In answering another question, our respondents were free to choose any or all of ten separate reasons for why some people continue to engage in environmentally destructive behavior. The most common reason selected was that it is "inconvenient to change" (67%). A plurality of other respondents believed that many think that "one person cannot make a difference" (40%), that it is "too expensive to change" (38%), and/or that appropriate "facilities or services are inconvenient to use" (36%). Furthermore, respondents were asked to rate both their level of knowledge and level of concern regarding issues in four general areas - water pollution, air pollution, land use, and health issues. In general, our respondents indicated only modest levels of knowledge yet significantly higher scores for personal concern across the range of issues. Nonetheless, the analysis of this data reveals that all pair-wise associations were significantly associated. In general, these correlations ranged from a relatively small association between what people knew about and were concerned over logging practices (r = .29) to the more substantial (yet still modest) association between respondents? knowledge of and personal concern for forest fragmentation and urban sprawl (r = .56 each).
Given the finding noted above, it is reasonable to assume that community-based social marketing approaches to educate and persuade citizens in the Lake Superior basin may be modestly successful. The key here will likely be to show citizens how threats may be averted and economic opportunities capitalized upon. It will also be very important to demonstrate the convenience, efficacy, and lack of expense associated with any remedial or proactive conduct on the part of individuals or municipal agencies. Finally, to the extent those surveyed in the first phase of the CARD indicated a relatively strong preference for electronic and newspaper venues for receiving information, it would be prudent (and, perhaps, more cost effective) to de-emphasize town-hall meetings or community workshops since these may be seen as an inconvenient intrusion to many individuals. For example, local media could be assisted in interviewing community residents to identify "success" stories and themes that may serve as springboards for influencing local practices.
The second major phase in the CARD project originally suggested returning to the selected communities to commence a "collaborative learning"-like process that gets stakeholders to consider their communities as systems and the interdependence of social, economic and environmental considerations in achieving sustainability. Such could still be accomplished, but we recommend that the SWG entice existing community groups to invite representatives in for presentations or workshops. Survey and interview data generated in the first phase of the CARD could be used to develop the specific content of these presentations as well as promote the community-based projects related to local concerns. Additionally, if these face-to-face encounters are to be effective, it may be advisable enlist relatively well-known allies (e.g., land trusts) or trusted secondary groups (e.g., churches) to serve as proxies for agencies represented by the Binational Program.
Credit: J.G. Cantrill
Contacts/Resources
Those interested in reviewing the full Phase I CARD report (including all subsidiary community-by-community analyses for the full range of survey questions) may contact: Jim Cantrill, Northern Michigan University, 1401 Presque Isle, Marquette, MI, 49855. Information regarding the Lake Superior Binational Program may be obtained by accessing:
http://www.epa.gov/glnpo/gl2000/lamps/index.html. Additional background material for this study is contained in the following case study references:
Cantrill, J. G. (1998). The environmental self and a sense of place: Communication foundations for regional ecosystem management.
Journal of Applied Communication Research, 26, 301 - 318.
Cantrill, J., Potter, T., & Stephenson, W. (2000). Protected areas and regional sustainability: Surveying decision makers in the Lake Superior Basin.
Natural Resources Journal, 40 (1), 19-45.
Strauss, A., & Corbin, J. (1990).
Basics of qualitative research. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.