Sustainability and interest group participation in city politics

Sustainability (Switzerland)

Volumn 5, Issue 5, 2013, Pages 2077-2097

  Berry, Jeffrey M ^a   Portney, Kent E ^a  

^a TUFTS UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

Business groups; Citizen groups; Interest groups; Sustainable cities; Urban sustainability

Indexed keywords

DEVELOPMENT STRATEGY; ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT; ECONOMIC GROWTH; PARTICIPATORY APPROACH; POLITICAL CHANGE; SUSTAINABILITY; URBAN POLICY; URBAN POLITICS;

UNITED STATES;

EID: 84883119658     PISSN: 20711050     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.3390/su5052077     Document Type: Article

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53. After a preliminary creation of the universe of interest groups in the largest forty cities, it became clear that by dropping the four largest cities, ten smaller cities could be added. Thus, the survey focused on fifty of the largest fifty-four cities.
54. To incentivize respondents to fill out the questionnaire, recipients of the questionnaire were offered the opportunity to win one of three $100 gift cards from Amazon.com. The mailings included a pre-paid (stamped) postcard allowing the respondent to provide his/her name and to be entered into the gift card raffle. This mailing also included a new $1 bill, which exerts significant influence on the response rate; See: Dillman, D., Smyth, J., Christian, L.M. Internet, Mail, and Mixed Mode Surveys: The Tailored Design Method, 3rd ed., Wiley: New York, NY, USA, 2009; pp. 238-242.
55. The generic term ".councilor". is used here, although some cities may refer to their representatives as Aldermen (as in Milwaukee), Supervisors (as in San Francisco), or Commissioners (as in Portland).
56. The survey of interest group advocates is not used here but the response rate for it was also high, 49.2 percent; See: ICMA. Local Government Sustainability Policies and Programs, 2010; International City/County Management Association: Washington, DC, USA, Available at: http://icma.org/en/icma/knowledge_network/documents/kn/Document/301646/I CMA_2010_Sustainability_Survey/(accessed on 31 January 2013).
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58. Another way of analyzing these relationships is through some sort of interaction effect. There are really two possibilities here: one is to compute an interaction variable as a function of the business inclusion and environmental group inclusion variables above, and, to then conduct a regression analysis with all three variables included in the equation. The second is to go back to the original survey data and define a new groups is almost .9, which precludes analyzing it in a single regression. Both the interaction variable and the new ".both". variable are correlated with the sustainability score at about the .40 to .45 level.
59. The scoring for liberal/very liberal is derived from a 7 point scale (1=very liberal, 4=moderate, and 7 = very conservative). The ".balance". data comes from a question that is worded: ".It's sometimes the case that economic development and environmental protection come into conflict. Although each issue is unique in its own way, if you were to make a generalization about how city officials choose between competing visions of what is best for the city, how would you rate your local government".". Respondents were given the choice of statements and asked to check the one that ".comes closest to describing your city.". Those statements were: (a) Strongly favors economic development; (b) Economic development somewhat more a priority; (c) Equal balance between economic development and environmental protection; (d) Environmental protection somewhat more a priority; and e) Strongly favors environmental protection.
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