A Public Health Frame for Fracking? Predicting Public Support for Hydraulic Fracturing

ABSTRACT

The American public is split on support for hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”). This study seeks to better understand fracking attitudes by predicting support via economic, environmental, and public health concern. We find support for fracking is intertwined with political partisanship. We show those identifying as “other” political party are significantly more likely to claim “don’t know” in response to questions of fracking support. However, fracking attitudes are not solely the product of political ideology, but also of perceived effects on the environment, the economy, and especially public health.

KEYWORDS:

• Fracking
• environmental sociology
• public opinion
• public health framing
• political partisanship

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Tim Liao, Tom VanHeuvelen, Jeremiah Bohr, Zsuzsa Gille, Monica McDermott, and Kevin Leicht for their thoughtful comments and support throughout the process of developing this paper, as well as the suggestions of anonymous peer reviewers. The authors would also like to indicate that the work for this article was completed in equal collaboration.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. This rhetoric of “energy dominance” continues to hold sway, with President Donald Trump and former Secretary of the Interior, Ryan Zinke, promoting an agenda of “energy dominance” as recently as 2018 (Rott 2018).

2. While Stoutenborough, Robinson, and Vedlitz (2016) found that using the word “fracking” instead of “hydraulic fracturing” did not produce a comparatively negative attitude about fracking among study participants, the majority of articles reviewed for this article indicate that “fracking” does, in fact, have negative connotations (Ceccoli 2018).

3. Of course, there are other factors to consider. Not the least of which is that the American policy making system is heavily influenced by lobbyists and other stakeholders (Dubois 2015), with fracking policy not exempt in this regard (Cook 2014; Kingdon 2010; Warner and Shapiro 2013).

4. Number in parentheses indicates the number of participants who provided a “not sure” response to questions about fracking’s effect on public health, the environment, and the economy.

5. The models were also run using income as an ordered categorical variable ($20 k increments). When run in this fashion, the relationship between income and the belief that fracking has a positive effect on the economy was positive (OR = 1.25).

6. The authors seek to recognize that there is a vast and important body of literature around environmental justice and racism that seek to reveal the unequal exposure of minority and marginalized communities to industrial harms and risks. Indeed, this has grave implications for environmental and health inequalities (e.g. Brulle and Pellow 2006). However, here, as it relates to our study that uses national level survey data, we are simply drawing a comparison between the everyday exposure of Americans to environmental and health risks, against countries that have a generally lower standard of health and environmental quality, which is in line with some of the more generalized theoretical frameworks that we evaluate in this paper.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Brian F. O’Neill

Brian F. O’Neill is a doctoral candidate in sociology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Working at the nexus of environmental sociology and political ecology, his research focuses on environmental politics, social movements, and industrial practices. His work has appeared in International Sociology Reviews, Berkeley Journal of Sociology, Bourdieu’s Field Theory and the Social Sciences, Natural Areas Journal, and the Journal of Political Ecology.

Matthew Jerome Schneider

Matthew Jerome Schneider is an assistant professor of sociology and criminal justice at the University of North Carolina at Pembroke. He has academic interests in race relations, environmental sociology, community development, civic engagement, and homelessness. His recently completed dissertation explores how volunteer group position and privilege inform grassroots homeless service activities and interactions in St. Louis, Missouri. His recent article “Exotic Place, White Space: Racialized Volunteer Spaces in Honduras” can be found in Sociological Forum.