Should I Stay or Should I Go

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Should I Stay or Should I Go?

• Investigating Resilience in BCs Coastal
  Communities

Justin Page, Ph.D. Student, UBCSandra Enns,
Ph.D. Candidate, UBCTodd Malinick, Ph.D.
Student, UBCRalph Matthews, Professor of
Sociology, UBC
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The Resilient Communities Project

• Multi-phase, multi-year research project
• Relations between social and economic development
  in rural, resource-dependent communities on BC
  coast
• 4800 surveys to 24 communities 60
• 93 community member interviews
• 78 community leader interviews

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What do we mean by resilience?

• Social resilience is an important component of
  the circumstances under which individuals and
  social groups adapt to environmental change
  (Adger 2000).
• Resource-dependent communities especially
  vulnerable to stress boom and bust cycles
• Adaptive capacity responding to changes in
  positive and constructive ways

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Solutions to Economic Decline

• Traditional top-down economic-only policies
• One size fits all little consideration given to
  individual communities needs
• RCP approach need to consider other factors as
  well, particularly social factors
• Ground-up, community-level economic and social
  solutions contributing to resilience

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Factors relating to resilience SOCIAL CAPITAL

• Benefit-producing features associated with social
  networks of interaction
• Trust, network ties, civic participation,
  political access, collective efficacy,
  institutional performance
• Individual-level and community-level (collective)
  resource

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Trust

• Life is a boundless set of interactions made
  possible by trust (Govier 1997)
• Precondition for cooperative social interaction
  response to inherent risk
• Also, outcome of social interaction emerges
  through continued positive contact
• Salience in rural communities
• communal interactions and communal reputations
  accountability and reciprocity

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Networks and Ties

• social capital inheres in the structure of
  relations between persons and among persons
  (Coleman 1990)
• Personal networks contain social resources that
  people can access through their ties to others
• These resources constitute social capital

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Civic Participation

• Civic involvement leads to the development of
  social networks that facilitate interpersonal
  trust and cooperation
• Involvement in the community gives people access
  to those they ordinarily might not interact with,
  including civic leaders
• Network diversity access to socially-embedded
  resources
• Rural distinction high level of involvement
• Builds commitment to and identification with
  community connects people to place

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Social Capital and Community Resilience

• Social capital ability to act as a buffer to
  vulnerability in times of economic decline
• Trust cooperative interaction for mutual benefit
• Ties access to socially-embedded resources and
  social support
• Civic participation commitment to community
  contributes to cohesion

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Research Question

• What makes communities resilient in the face of
  economic change?

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Dependent Variable

• Willingness to leave
• I would move away from this community if a good
  job came up somewhere else

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Analytic Framework Variable Type By Level Of
Analysis
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Socio-Demographics

• Age (19-59 years)
• Gender
• Marital status
• Children in the household
• Length of time in the community
• Education

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Individual-Level Economic Characteristics

• Income
• Personal income in the last year before taxes
• Employment status
• employed full-time or not

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Individual-Level Social Characteristics

• Trust
• Trust of institutions
• Trust of community members
• Civic Engagement
• Volunteering
• Interest in local politics
• Voting in local elections
• Network Ties
• Ties to acquaintances and relatives inside and
  outside the community

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Community-Level Economic Characteristics

• Economic opportunities
• Business leaders in this community are creating
  economic opportunities here
• Employment opportunities
• poor to good
• Isolation
• isolated to not isolated

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Community-Level Social Characteristics

• Social Cohesion
• Sense of community People in this community
  have a weak sense of community
• Community Inclusiveness It is hard for people
  to make close friends in this community
• Collective Efficacy
• The future of this community depends more on
  what happens outside the community than inside it

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Community-Level Social Characteristics (cont.)

• Political Environment
• Political access People like me dont have any
  say about what the political leaders in this
  community do.
• Political representation The political leaders
  in this community generally represent the
  interests of a few powerful groups.
• Institutional Functioning
• Safety (good to poor)
• Schools (good to poor)
• Crime (high to low)
• Health-Care (good to poor)

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Analysis and Results

• We evaluated the four multivariate regression
  models using SPSS.

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Socio-Demographics and Individual-Level Economic
Characteristics
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Individual-Level Social Characteristics
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Community-Level Economic Characteristics
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Community-Level Social Characteristics
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Conclusion

• Importance of social factors to community
  resilience
• Trust, civic engagement, sense of community,
  social cohesion, community efficacy, and
  political representation
• Need for support of community capacity-building