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Perceptions Of The Economy And Employment In Nonmetropolitan Nebraska: 2022 Nebraska Rural Poll Results, Rebecca J. Vogt, Heather Akin, Cheryl A. Burkhart-Kriesel, Bradley Lubben, L. J. Mcelravy, Timothy L. Meyer, Steven A. Schulz, Amanda Tupper

Nebraska Rural Poll

Most rural Nebraskans believe most of the listed economic items will become worse or much worse over the next 12 months when asked in May and June. Almost nine in ten think the following will become worse: inflation, gasoline or diesel fuel prices, grocery prices, and interest rates. In fact, at least four in ten rural Nebraskans believe the following items will become much worse in the next 12 months: gasoline or diesel fuel prices, inflation, grocery prices, and healthcare costs. The two items that had less than one-half believing they would become worse or much worse during the next …

Nebraska’S Rural Population: Historical Facts And Future Projections, Cheryl A. Burkhart-Kriesel

Cornhusker Economics

Drive down any rural highway in our state and you will quickly conclude that we are a collection of small towns and villages, with a few larger cities thrown in. Some of them are thriving while others are not. You might ask yourself, why the difference? To fully appreciate this current situation, you need to think back to how our state developed.

Our state has 530 incorporated places with 89% of these communities having fewer than 3,000 people. Nebraska is not alone in this fact, with our neighboring states of Kansas, Oklahoma, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Iowa in the …

The Arts And Changing Rural Places, Bernadette Quinn Dr

Blog Posts

This blog post reflects on how recent changes to rural Ireland is influencing the arts. It recognises that rural places are very vibrant and dynamic, and that this offers many opportunities and challenges from an arts perspective. The blog also reflects on a panel discussion that the FADE project team hosted on ‘The arts and changing rural places’ at the Arts Council & Local Government’s biennial Places Matter conference in March 2022.

The research activities conducted for this publication were funded by the Irish Research Council.

Cottagecore And Rural Gentrification, Zoe Johnston

The Compass

The internet has become filled with images of stone cottages covered in ivy, sepia-tinted tea parties abundant with home-baked pastries, women in peasant dresses trailing their fingers across tall grasses, and flower bouquets set into mason jars. Each of these scenes is categorized under the aesthetic of “cottagecore,” which is growing in popularity. This aesthetic movement draws upon people’s desires for simplicity and a nostalgia for a pre-industrial lifestyle. However, an unexamined consequence of this idyllic fantasy is the subsequent gentrification of rural communities. Gentrification is the process of funneling capital into low-income neighborhoods to make them more attractive to …

An Intergenerational Study Of The Entrepreneurial Nature Of Agritourism Operators, Will Culler

All Dissertations

Economic and non-economic trends have left farm operators of all ages contemplating enterprise diversification strategies to create advantages and to ensure their farms' sustainability for future generations. One such strategy is agritourism, in which a visitor to a working farm or other agricultural setting interacts with the farm landscape or participates in an agricultural process for tourism or leisure purposes. This study aims to contribute to academics, researchers, extension educators, practitioners, and farm service providers who offer training and resources to better equip current and future agritourism operators. The study tested the general hypothesis that agritourism operators' entrepreneurial goals and …

Revisiting Rural Education Access, Elizabeth Wargo, Ian Hoke

Educational Considerations

Drawing on a contemporary construction of rurality, which acknowledges rural education amplified by technology, we capture two examples where online mathematics resources were used in a rural middle school setting. As such we examine issues and consider rural education access as it is changed with technology towards a more nuanced understanding of rural contexts necessary to inform future rural education policy, practice, and research.

Unique Conference Design Showcases Small Towns, Highlights Entrepreneurs, And Strengthens Capacity, Carey Andrew Northrop Mr., Katherine M. Jamieson Mrs., Parker B. Jones, Mary A. Reilly, Tyler Augst

The Journal of Extension

Michigan State University Extension (MSUE)’s annual conference, Connecting Entrepreneurial Communities (CEC), has served as a catalyst for entrepreneurial ecosystems across Michigan since 2012. Designed by MSUE for small towns, CEC has gained national interest as evidenced by the adoption of this conference model by four other Extension services. This article outlines the unique conference design, details the partnership between Extension and host communities, and explores conference evaluation data validating the need to continue this programming. Lessons learned and successes to date are provided to ensure readers learn the value this unique conference format has in Extension entrepreneurship programming nationally.

Beyond Religiosity: Examining The Relative Effects Of Religiosity And Religious Ideation On Climate Skepticism (A Research Note), Kristin Haltinner, Dilshani Sarathchandra

Journal of Rural Social Sciences

Much of the existing scholarship on climate change uses religiosity to measure the effects of religion on climate skepticism and results in inconsistent findings. Drawing on insights from the study of religion and environmentalism more broadly, we suggest that scholars should seek a deeper understanding of religion’s impacts by considering the influence of specific religious beliefs on perceptions of climate change. We further contend that researchers should consider how these factors shape attitudes within and between segments of the public who hold varying positions on climate change. We test these contentions using a novel sample of 1,000 self-declared “climate skeptics” …

Making The Rural Urban: Inter-Class Dynamics To Protect The Environment In The Colombian Countryside, Sebastián F. Villamizar Santamaría

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

For the past thirty years, the small rural town of La Calera in the outskirts of the Colombian capital of Bogotá has received an influx of upper-middle class residents that want to live “in nature.” These ex-urban newcomers arrived in the Andean highlands to live next to the long-time residents, who are descendants of peasants and mining workers that live “off nature.” The different visions of what nature or its uses should create a series of interactions among residents that will decide how will this area’s ecological resources be used in the face of further urban expansion.

Yet, contrary to …

"The Pontotoc Dream:" A Case Study Analysis Of Rural Homeownership In Mississippi, Ian Pigg

Honors Theses

Rural communities face issues with affordable housing just like urban communities, but these problems are not often associated with rurality. Using Pontotoc County, Mississippi, as a case study, this thesis seeks to understand the extent of the affordable homeownership issue in rural communities and identify possible policy solutions. This thesis used a qualitative research approach by conducting semi-structured interviews with a diverse group of stakeholders in the communities of interest within and surrounding Pontotoc County, Mississippi. Using the data collected from these interviews, units of meaning were grouped into categories, which were then grouped into themes. The findings of this …

Outdoor Pursuits And Outdoor Learning At Rural Maine Schools: A Positive Outlier Approach, Lauren E. Jacobs

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study explored the barriers and facilitators to outdoor learning and outdoor pursuits (OPs) in some of the most rural isolated K-12 schools in Maine. The purpose was to understand why some of these schools incorporate a lot of OPs and outdoor learning into their curriculum while other schools do not. Outdoor pursuits and outdoor learning in school settings are worthy of study because they provide students with opportunities to increase physical activity, benefit from time in nature, and make important connections to local culture (Lim et al., 2017; Schafft, 2016; Trembley et al., 2015).

This study employed a comparative …

Social Infrastructure (“Third Places”) Is Not Distributed Equally Across The U.S., Danielle Rhubart, Yue Sun, Claire Pendergrast, Shannon M. Monnat

Population Health Research Brief Series

Third places are the physical spaces in a community where people can gather to connect and share resources, support, and information. They can help support health because they promote social interaction, community trust, and resource and information sharing. This data slice shows that third places are not evenly distributed across the U.S. Results show less availability of third places per capita in neighborhoods (Census tracts) with larger shares of non-Hispanic Blacks and Hispanics and larger shares of residents in poverty. The authors also found that third places are in shorter supply in rural neighborhoods than in urban neighborhoods, with the …

Making Forests, Making Communities: An Ethnography Of Reforestation In Monteverde, Costa Rica, Megan Brown

Anthropology Theses and Dissertations

Reforestation is not just planting trees in the ground. More than net increase in forest cover, reforestation is a complex political endeavor undertaken by both humans and non-humans and a popular climate change mitigation tactic. However, little research has examined the dynamics between selection of specific reforestation strategies, health, and community resilience, particularly with attention to entanglements between the lives of both human and non-human forest dwellers. This ethnographic work, based on six months of in-person fieldwork and six months of digital ethnography, examines reforestation and forest relations in Costa Rica’s Monte Verde zone, a region which experienced widespread deforestation, …

Views Of Well-Being In Nonmetropolitan Nebraska: 2022 Nebraska Rural Poll Results, Rebecca J. Vogt, Heather Akin, Cheryl A. Burkhart-Kriesel, Bradley Lubben, L. J. Mcelravy, Timothy L. Meyer, Steven A. Schulz, Amanda Tupper

Nebraska Rural Poll

This year, rural Nebraskans are more pessimistic about their current situation than they’ve been in the past nine years. The proportion believing they are worse off than they were five years ago was 21 percent, up from the 11 percent reported last year. This is the highest level since 2013, when 26 percent believed they were worse off. This increase in pessimism did not translate into a decrease in optimism, however. This year, one-half of rural Nebraskans believe they are better off compared to five years ago, similar to 52 percent last year. The corresponding change occurred in a decrease …

Nonmetropolitan Nebraskans’ Opinions About Water, Climate, And Energy: 2022 Nebraska Rural Poll Results, Rebecca J. Vogt, Heather Akin, Cheryl A. Burkhart-Kriesel, Bradley Lubben, L. J. Mcelravy, Timothy L. Meyer, Steven A. Schulz, Amanda Tupper

Nebraska Rural Poll

Most rural Nebraskans receive their home tap water from city water or municipal water systems. Just over two-thirds of rural Nebraskans receive their drinking water from a municipal system. One-quarter have private well water and seven percent are on a rural water system.

Many rural Nebraskans have tested their home tap water for nitrates. However, a similar proportion indicated they have not tested their water or are unsure. Persons with higher household incomes are more likely than persons with lower incomes to have tested their home water for each of the items listed. Many persons with the lowest household incomes …

Community Well-Being And Leadership In Nonmetropolitan Nebraska: 2022 Nebraska Rural Poll Results, Rebecca J. Vogt, Heather Akin, Cheryl A. Burkhart-Kriesel, Bradley Lubben, L. J. Mcelravy, Timothy L. Meyer, Steven A. Schulz, Amanda Tupper

Nebraska Rural Poll

Rural Nebraskans are less positive about the current change and expected future change in their communities this year. The proportion believing their community has changed for the better has typically been greater than the proportion believing it has changed for the worse. However, last year the proportion believing their community changed for the worse was slightly more than the proportion believing it had changed for the better (similar to what occurred in 2003 and 2009). This year, that gap widened a bit.

Despite that, rural Nebraskans are positive about their community by many different measures. Most rural Nebraskans rate their …

Exploring The Relationship Between Place Attachment And Attitudes Toward Tourism Development In Powell County, Lindsay Vance

Theses and Dissertations--Community & Leadership Development

This study explores the relationship between Powell County, Kentucky residents’ place attachment, and the perceived sociocultural, environmental, and financial benefits of the future Warrior’s Path development. A survey consisting primarily of five-point Likert scale questions was shared with several local organizations to distribute to their members. The Pearson’s correlation coefficient and Chi-square test of independence tests were used to discover any correlation between place attachment and perceived sociocultural, environmental, and financial benefits of tourism development. The Pearson’s correlation coefficient (r=.465) determined a moderate positive correlation between place attachment and perceived sociocultural benefits of the Warrior’s Path and tourism development. Of …

Deep Roots In Eroding Soil: Building Decolonial Resilience Amidst Climate Violence And Displacement In A Louisiana Bayou Indigenous Community, Lia Mcgrath Kahan

Senior Independent Study Theses

The Pointe-au-Chien Indigenous community of coastal Louisiana is fighting for survival as climate change and socio-political factors threaten to displace them from their ancestral home. This project takes an ethnographic and historical approach to exploring how colonization and climate change have influenced Pointe-au-Chien tribal members’ ability to stay on their ancestral land. Climate projections estimate that the bayou this community has lived alongside of for generations will soon be unrecognizable, leading to potential displacement and devastating cultural loss. Due to the increasing severity of climate change, it is crucial to look to the experiences of frontline Indigenous communities to support …

Nebraska Annual Social Indicators Survey (Nasis) 2022 Methodology Report, Bureau Of Sociological Research

Nebraska Annual Social Indicators Survey (NASIS)

No abstract provided.

Nasis 2022: Nebraska Annual Social Indicators Survey Questionnaire, Bureau Of Sociological Research

Nebraska Annual Social Indicators Survey (NASIS)

No abstract provided.

Organizing For Power: Understanding Changing Conceptions Of Power In Rural Community Organizing, Evan R. Morden

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

Community organizing is a practice of building and utilizing collective power, often initiated by groups who have little or no preexisting social or economic power. By acting together in a disciplined, organized, and targeted fashion, organizing is used to exert influence in the public square to achieve policy outcomes, provide mutual aid, and reweave the fabric of social relations in communities, frequently in direct opposition to existing power structures. Thus, creating a shared understanding of power that is fundamentally liberative is key to the success of organizing efforts and moreover, to creating lasting community cohesion that can continue to mount …