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Evolving California opinion on offshore oil development
Ocean & Coastal Management, Vol. 26, No. 1, pp. 41-56, 1995 Copyright ~) 1995 Elsevier Science Ltd Printed in Northern Ireland. All rights reserved •0964-5691/95 $9.50 + 0.00 ELSEVIER
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Evolving California opinion on offshore oil development E r i c R. A. N. S m i t h ° & Sonia R. G a r c i a b ° Department of Political Science, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA 93106, USA b Department of Political Science, St Mary's University of San Antonio, San Antonio, TX 78228, USA (Received 11 October 1993; accepted in revised form 15 February 1995)
ABSTRACT Whether oil companies should be allowed to drill more oil wells along the California coast is the subject of a great deal of conflict. We examine public opinion on the question using a series of public opinion polls o f Californians. We find that public support for coastal oil development has sharply declined since 1980. The groups most supportive of drilling are conservatives, Republicans, the least well educated, the old, and non-whites. Surprisingly, proximity to offshore oil development is not related to support. These findings give us a basis for predicting that support for further oil drilling will continue to decline. Finally, we show that the public's attitudes on energy policy do not lead to any practical energy policy.
1. E V O L V I N G C A L I F O R N I A OPINION ON O F F S H O R E OIL DEVELOPMENT The question of whether oil companies should be allowed to drill more oil wells along the California coast of the USA has been a subject of repeated conflicts over the last century. ~ When oil companies pioneered offshore oil drilling at Summerland, California, in 1896, they were met with protests by local residents. 2 Other protests followed from time to time over the next decades. In 1955, the state of California responded by creating its first offshore oil sanctuary, prohibiting drilling in an area off the coast of Santa Barbara. 3 In 1969, a Union Oil platform spilled 4.2 million gallons of crude oil into the Santa Barbara Channel and helped to launch both the environmental movement and a vehement local effort to prevent any new oil development along the California 41
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E. R. A. N. Smith, S. R. Garcia
coast. During his 1988 presidential campaign, President Bush reacted to the continuing anti-oil drilling protests by declaring a temporary moratorium on further federal government oil leases along the coast. That moratorium is set to expire in 1997. At the root of these protests and of the government responses lies public opinion. Although public opinion certainly influences government decisions about offshore oil development, little research has been done about what the public thinks? We seek to fill that gap by analyzing public attitudes toward offshore oil drilling along the California coast. In this paper, we will discuss what we know about the opinions of Californians based on a series of California Polls conducted from 19771990. 5 The polls were all designed to be representative cross-sections of California adults. 6 We will discuss trends in opinion over the last 15 years, patterns of opinion today, and what one might reasonably expect opinion to be in the future. In order to understand opinions on offshore oil development, we will also examine opinions on related energy and environmental issues. 2. OPINION TRENDS From 1977-1980, the California public favored offshore oil drilling (see Fig. 1). Possibly urged on by the oil price increases resulting from the OPEC embargoes of the 1970s, a majority clearly supported additional coastal oil development. After 1980, however, public support for offshore oil development along the California coast declined substantially. In 1980, 60% of California adults agreed with the statement, 'Oil eO
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fig. 1. Support for more coastal oil drillingin California.
Evolving California opinion on offshore oil development
43
companies should be allowed to drill more oil and gas wells in state tidelands along the California seacoast.' By 1990, that number had dropped to only 34%. A few comments are needed to help interpret the data. First, small differences in how questions are worded can cause differences in the responses. The California Poll wrote these questions in an agree/disagree format. One result of asking questions in this format is that some people tend to agree irrespective of the content of the question. 7 That is, people with weak opinions tend to agree with statements, no matter what the statements are. It follows that these questions probably tend to favor drilling more oil. Had they been reworded in the opposite direction so that people were asked to agree with a ban on future offshore oil drilling, support for oil drilling would probably have been lower than the level shown by these questions. Second, the dip in support for offshore oil in 1989 is almost certainly influenced by the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska in March 1989. The California Poll asked its 1989 question in July. So what we see in 1989 is probably a short-term shift in opinion as people think about the recent oil-related disaster. By 1990, the Exxon Valdez no longer jumps to mind when people are asked about offshore oil drilling, so the polls register an increase in support for drilling after 1989. However, we should note that the 1990 level of support is lower than the 1984 level. From a long-term perspective, the post-1980 decline in support for oil drilling seems to have continued. Third, in these data we see a strong trend away from support for oil drilling. Trends or changes in public opinion are uncommon) When looking at series of public opinion surveys over time, the usual outcome is that there is no change at all. The most thorough investigation of change in public opinion over time, revealed what the authors described as a 'remarkable degree of stability in Americans' collective policy preferences') The authors of this investigation collected all the public opinion time series available from the major commercial and academic survey organizations from 1935 to 1990 and discovered that fewer than half of them changed, and when they did change, most of those changes were quite modest. Fewer than 7% of all public opinion items changed as much as 20% (the size of the 1980-1990 change in support for oil drilling) and fewer than 2% changed as much as 30% (the size of the shift in attitudes toward oil drilling if we measure from 1980 to 1989). By those standards, this 10 year shift from support to opposition to oil drilling is unusual. Fourth, the trend in opinion toward offshore oil drilling parallels other, weaker, trends in environmental issues. During the Reagan
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E. R. A. N. Smith, S. R. Garcia
presidency (1981-1988), public opinion on several issues, which were regularly the subjects of national surveys, moved in a pro-conservation direction (although the changes were not as great as the change found in attitudes toward offshore oil drilling). For instance, both in California and in the USA as a whole, we see a trend in attitudes away from support for nuclear power plants as a source for electricity? A common interpretation of these trends is that the anti-environmentalist stands of the Reagan administration and such prominent policy makers as Interior Secretary James Watt produced an environmental backlash in public opinion. 1°-12 Another common interpretation of these trends is that public support for energy development became unusually high during the 1970s because of the 1973 Arab-Israeli War, the 1974 OPEC boycott, and the second surge in OPEC oil prices in 1979. When oil prices stabilized and the public's attention moved on to other matters, public enthusiasm for further energy development waned--producing a trend of declining support for such measures as increased offshore oil development, s'13 We believe that both explanations are probably partly correct. The implication of these parallel trends is that people are probably not responding to the survey questions solely based on their knowledge of the risks and benefits entailed by offshore oil development. Instead, people are probably responding to the questions based both on their knowledge of oil development and on their general environmentalist attitudes. Indeed, given past research showing that most people do not know many facts about any specific policy decisions, ~4-~6 it would be surprising if the California public were very knowledgeable about offshore oil development. The public is certainly not knowledgeable about other aspects of oil and energy policy, as demonstrated by a January 1991 Gallup Poll, which showed that even during the fighting in the Gulf War, only 50% of the public knew that the USA had to import foreign oil to meet its energy needs. 17 Therefore, it seems reasonable to suspect that the sources of these attitudes do not lie solely in specific knowledge and beliefs about oil development p e r se.
3. PATTERNS OF SUPPORT AND OPPOSITION TO OFFSHORE OIL DRILLING Although the level of support for offshore development changed over time, the pattern of supporters and opponents was fairly consistent across time--appearing from the 1970s to 1990. This pattern is typical of attitudes toward most environmental issues. TM
Evolving California opinion on offshore oil development
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40 U
15 10 8 0
Fig. 2. Support for drillingby self-identifiedideology. The pattern of support consists of six population characteristics which correlate with attitudes toward offshore oil drilling. The characteristics are: self-identified ideology, party identification, education, age, race/ethnicity and region of the state. Each of these variables----except region--makes a significant, independent contribution to explaining attitudes toward oil drilling. In the description that follows, we begin with simple cross-tabulations and then present a multivariate model to show how these variables collectively influence attitudes toward offshore oil drilling. All of the bivariate relationships we discuss in the following tables are statistically significant at p < 0.05. Conservatives are more likely to support offshore drilling than self-identified liberals. Self-identified ideology is measured with a five-point scale from strong conservative to strong liberal. As Fig. 2 shows, conservatives are over four times more likely to support drilling than liberals (44% as opposed to 9%). Republicans are more likely than Democrats to support offshore drilling. Party identification is measured with a seven-point scale ranging from strong Republican to strong Democrat. As Fig. 3 shows, Republicans are far more supportive of drilling than Democrats, with strong Republicans being the most supportive at 48%. Although independent Democrats are the least likely to favor more drilling at 18% support, all types of Democrats oppose drilling more than any type of Republican. The least educated are more likely to support offshore oil drilling than the well educated. As Fig. 4 shows, 47% of those with less than a high school education support drilling, but only 18% of those with educations beyond a Master's degree support it. Given the higher voter turnout rate and greater level of political activism among the well educated, this relationship has important political implications for
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E. R. A. N. Smith, S. R. Garcia
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Fig. 3. Support for drilling by party identification.
future oil development. 19 Those who are most strongly opposed to additional development are those to whom elected officials tend to pay the most attention. When it comes to age, the old are significantly more likely to support offshore oil drilling than the young. As Fig. 5 shows, those who were 46 or older in 1990 were far more supportive of additional drilling than those 45 and under. Among racial and ethnic groups, African Americans are the most likely to support offshore oil drilling at 47%, whites are the least likely at 33%, and Latinos and Asians fall in between (see Fig. 6). In the multivariate analysis discussed below, these differences are largely, but not entirely, explained by the other variables discussed above-especially education. People residing in one of the four southern Californian coastal counties near which offshore oil development exists---an area stretching
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Fig. 4. Support for drilling by education.
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Evolving California opinion on offshore oil development
47
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Fig. 5. Supportfor drilling by age.
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Fig. 6. Supportfor drilling by race and ethnicity. roughly 280 miles along the coast and 25 miles inland from San Luis Obispo through Orange county--are more likely to support offshore oil drilling than those living elsewhere in the state, by a margin of 39% to 32% (see Fig. 7). This may seem surprising since local opposition to oil
In
l Fig. 7. Supportfor drilling by region of state.
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E. R. A. N. Smith, S. R. Garcia
development has been very intense in many of these coastal oilproducing areas. 2° However, our finding is consistent with previous studies in England which have shown that being close to oil wells or nuclear power plants makes people somewhat more positively inclined toward them.2a,z2 In the case of California, these differences seem to be entirely the result of the other variables discussed above. That is, in our multivariate analysis, region makes no statistically significant difference. Because our finding that proximity to offshore oil development or to the coast makes no difference to people's attitudes surprised us, we examined several different measures of proximity. We speculated that a different measure of proximity might be related to opinions on offshore oil development. In addition to the breakdown in Fig. 7, we looked at differences between those living in coastal counties and noncoastal counties. We also separated the more rural/suburban oil-producing counties (San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara and Ventura) from the more urban counties (Los Angeles and Orange) to see if those groups of counties differed from one another or from the rest of the state. Using zip codes, we looked at differences between those living within 20 miles of the coast or within 20 miles of the coast in a county with offshore oil development from those living elsewhere. In only one of our analyses was there a significant difference once ideology, party identification, education, age, and race/ethnicity were controlled. In a 1989 survey, residents living within 20 miles of the coast in an oil-producing county were slightly more likely to support additional offshore oil drilling than those living elsewhere in the state. 23 This category was not very large, however, consisting of only 66 people in a sample of 993 (6.6%). In short, we are reasonably confident that neither proximity to the coast nor proximity to offshore oil development influences general support for further development. If proximity does make any difference, the evidence suggests that it is quite small and that being close to the coast increases support for development. Of course, proximity to a specific proposed oil development may influence support or opposition to that development. We examined only support as measured by the California Poll questions, which refer to additional coastal drilling without specifying exact location. Fortunately for our investigation, two surveys of Santa Barbara county residents, conducted in 1988 and 1990, addressed this issue by asking questions about support for 'oil drilling off the Santa Barbara c o a s t ' . 24,25 In those years, there were highly publicized proposals to drill additional offshore wells along the Santa Barbara coast. The first survey yielded 39% in favor of drilling and 54% opposed; the second yielded 37% in favor and 54% opposed. These numbers are remarkably close to the 34% in
Evolving California opinion on offshore oil development
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TABLE 1
A logistic regression model of support for oil development Variable
Coe~icient
Standard error
Intercept
- 0.34
0.43
Party identification Ideology Education Age Hispanic Black Oil county
- 0-13 - 0.21 - 0.09 0.016 0.48 0.71 0.17
0.05 0.10 0-04 0.006 0.32 0.44 0.20
Standardized estimate
- 0-16 - 0.13 - 0.11 0.15 0.08 0.09 0.05
N = 540. -2 × log likelihood = 650.4. Somers' D = 0.34. Source: data from California Poll 91304(August 1990). favor of additional drilling found in the m o r e general 1990 California Poll questions. In sum, these data point toward the same conclusion as do the California Poll d a t a m p r o x i m i t y to the coast or potential drilling sites makes little or no difference in public opinion. T o complete our analysis of these data, we estimated a logistic regression model with support for coastal oil drilling as our d e p e n d e n t variable and the six characteristics discussed above as our independent variables. The results of the model, shown in Table 1, are consistent with the bivariate results discussed above. Ideology, party identification, education, and age all have large, statistically significant effects in the expected directions. The d u m m y variables for being black or Latino are only of borderline significance, but a significance test on the pair of variables shows that together they do make a statistically significant contribution to explaining support for offshore oil drilling. In other words, as a coalition, blacks and Latinos do explain support or lack of support for offshore oil drilling. Living in a coastal, oil-producing county does not have any effect. That coefficient is small and not even close to being statistically significant. Overall, the m o d e l fits the data reasonably well, as indicated by the Somers' D of 0.34. 4. T H E I M P L I C A T I O N S OF T H E P A T T E R N S T w o of the above patterns merit particular comment. Most of these variables and their effects should remain roughly constant over time (e.g. ideology, party identification) and therefore offer us no basis for
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E. R. A. N. Smith, S. R. Garcia
predicting any changes in future opinion. That is not the case with education and age. The distribution of education and the relationship between age and support for oil development should both change in predictable ways in coming years. Because of this, we can make some tentative predictions about future attitudes toward oil drilling off the California coast. The process of generational change can be seen at work in the age distribution. Leading studies of socialization tell us that people acquire most of their attitudes (e.g. environmentalism) when they are young (i.e. 10-25 years old) and keep those attitudes roughly unchanged throughout their l i v e s . 26 According to this line of reasoning, the pro-development attitudes that we see among the old in our data are largely the result of prevailing attitudes that these people learned in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s. In contrast, the pro-environmentalist attitudes of the young can be attributed to the prevailing attitudes since the beginning of the environmentalist movement in the 1960s. Other workers27 who have examined environmental attitudes argue that the consequence of this generational pattern of change is that in the years to come, older people with pro-development attitudes will be replaced by younger people with pro-environment attitudes. Therefore, we can expect attitudes in the population as a whole to become less supportive of further oil development as older supporters of oil drilling are replaced by younger opponents. The changing distribution of education should also be expected to have a generational impact on attitudes toward environmental issues. The average level of education in California has been increasing steadily since World War II and is expected to continue to increase in years to come. This shift is driven by the rise of public education in California (as it is all across the nation). Young, well educated people are entering the electorate on one end of the age distribution, while old, poorly educated people are passing on at the other end. Along with their higher educations, the young bring environmentalist attitudes into the electorate. That is, as we noted above, the well educated who are entering the electorate are likely to oppose offshore oil development more than the poorly educated who are leaving the electorate. Therefore, this process of generational replacement raises the average educational level of the state and, at the same time, is likely to increase the proportion of environmentally inclined citizens who oppose additional offshore oil development. Let us sum up the implications of our data. As the years pass, older, less well educated people who acquired their attitudes before the environmentalist movement began in the 1960s will be replaced by
Evolving California opinion on offshore oil development
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younger, more well educated people who acquired their attitudes after the environmentalist movement was well underway. Because of this generational change, we can expect a slow shift toward less support for oil drilling in the future. In any given year, this change will be quite small, but over the course of the next two decades, we should expect a moderate shift--large enough to have a substantial political impact. Let us qualify this prediction of growing environmentalism. We have been making an argument which some social scientists would describe as 'Demography is Destiny'. That is, we have been suggesting that demographic changes allow us to predict the future. They do, to some extent. However, a wide range of factors could potentially overwhelm the demographic tides. The environmentalist movement is, itself, an example. The huge difference in attitudes between the young and old largely reflects the success of the environmentalists. Predictions about environmental attitudes based on data from the 1950s would have proven false within a decade. Other social or political events could similarly alter the direction of attitude change and render our present predictions inaccurate. Another energy crisis such as the OPEC oil embargo, for instance, might alter future opinions on energy issues. In short, our predictions can only be tentative, yet hopefully contribute to the understanding of the overall dynamics of attitude change on environmentalism.
5. ENERGY POLICY AND THE ROLE OF OIL Looking only at the results of single survey questions can be a misleading way to judge the public's preferences in broad policy areas. If we were to look only at questions about support for offshore oil drilling, we might imagine that the public holds a consistent set of preferences regarding energy policies and that their preferences about offshore oil development fit into a coherent strategy for dealing with energy problems. Unfortunately, that is not the case. In order to understand the public's attitudes toward oil development and energy policies, we must go beyond a narrow focus on whether to increase offshore oil drilling. When we do so by taking a look at a range of energy questions, we do not find much evidence of a coherent strategy. The following survey findings from two 1989 and 1990 California Polls suggest that the public's attitude toward the role of oil development in energy policy has seeming inconsistencies.28 The public objects to more oil development in California, but the public also recognizes
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E. R. A. N. Smith, S. R. Garcia TABLE 2
Attitudes on various energy issues How serious do you think this country's energy crisis is right now? (1989) Extremely serious 46% Somewhat serious 41% Not too serious 9% No opinion 2% What about the offshore coastal areas of the USA. How much oil is there that could be discovered and developed in these areas? (1989) A great deal 27% Quite a bit 20% Some 19% Only a little 9% No opinion 25% How important do you believe it is for the USA to cut down on the amount of oil that it imports from foreign countries? (1989) Extremely important 48% Somewhat important 37% Not too important 11% No opinion 3% We can have oil drilling in offshore coastal areas and at the same time provide adequate environmental safeguards Agree 50% Disagree 48% No opinion 2% Source: data from California Poll 8903 (July 1989) and 91304(August 1990). the need for m o r e oil and does not want it to c o m e from foreign sources. The first question in Table 2 shows that in July 1989, 87% of Californians considered the country's energy situation to be e x t r e m e l y serious or s o m e w h a t serious. These results m a t c h those of a series of earlier surveys f r o m 1979 to 1984, in which 89% or m o r e of the California Poll's r e s p o n d e n t s agreed with the statement: ' E v e n with strict conservation, we will have to develop a lot m o r e energy sources to m e e t this country's future energy needs.' In short, the public recognizes the energy 'crisis' and regards it as serious. The second and third questions in Table 2 suggest a solution to the energy shortage. T h e public thinks that domestic oil supplies are available and that the U S A should not continue to rely on foreign energy sources. Finally, the last question in Table 2 (from A u g u s t 1990) shows the results of a question concerning safety. H a l f of the public thinks that we can have offshore oil drilling and provide a d e q u a t e environmental safeguards at the same time.
Evolving California opinion on offshore oil development
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We may summarize these results as follows. Large numbers of people (a) think the energy situation is serious, (b) do not want to solve it by importing foreign oil, (c) think it can be solved by drilling more oil in USA coastal waters and (d) think coastal drilling is reasonably safe. Yet a substantial majority opposes further oil drilling. Comparing the safety and support questions offers an interesting insight. In 1990, 50% said that further oil development was safe, yet only 34% supported it. That is, a substantial number of people believe that further oil drilling is safe, but undesirable. These people must have other reasons for opposing offshore oil development. Although our data do not offer us any proof, we would guess that aesthetic judgements explain these people's objections to further oil development. Other solutions to the energy shortage problem are possible, of course, but we have no evidence in our survey data to show which ones, if any, Californians regard as desirable. Additional drilling for oil in 'government parklands and forest reserves' is rejected by majorities. Nuclear power is equally unpopular. Solar power research was supported in the late 1970s and early 1980s, but about half of the California Poll respondents agreed that 'getting solar energy to a point at which it can generate substantial portions of our electrical power needs will take at least twenty years. '29 In short, Californians think that they need the energy, but they do not want to produce it in California. There is an obvious solution to these seeming inconsistencies. Californians may simply want to have the benefits of plentiful, inexpensive oil and other forms of energy without bearing the costs of having it produced in California. Unfortunately, the California Poll did not include questions about people's attitudes to increased oil production in such places as Alaska, Louisiana, or Texas. So we cannot say with certainty that Californians would be more supportive of oil development elsewhere.
6. C O N C L U D I N G COMMENTS Public opinion is a powerful force in politics. Changes in public opinion as large as the changes in Californians' attitudes toward offshore oil development are rare. For these reasons, the corresponding shift in public policy--to a temporary moratorium on granting additional offshore oil leases until the year 1997--is hardly surprising, a Given the likely future course of public opinion, away from support for additional oil development, we expect a great deal of pressure on elected officials to make the temporary moratorium a permanent one. If there are
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E. R. A. N. Smith, S. R. Garcia
future oil shortages such as those of the 1970s, complete with sharp price hikes and lines at gas stations, both public opinion and policies may change. Without such shortages, however, we doubt that either public opinion or government policies will swing toward greater offshore oil development in coming years. ACKNOWLEDGEMENT This research was supported by the Minerals Management Service, US Department of the Interior, under MMS Agreement No. 14-35-000130471. The views and conclusions contained in this document are those of the authors and should not be interpreted as necessarily representing the official policies, either express or implied, of the US Government. REFERENCES 1. Cicin-Sain, B., California and ocean management: Problems and opportunities. Coastal Management, 18 (1990) 311-35. 2. Paddock, R. C., Drilling advance rekindles Santa Barbara oil wars. Los Angeles Times, 5 December 1994. 3. Lima, J. T., The Politics o f Offshore Energy Development. Unpublished dissertation, University of California, Santa Barbara. 4. Strand, P. J., The energy issue: Partisan characteristics. Environ. Behav., 13 (1981) 509-19. 5. The California Polls used in this paper were conducted by the Held Research Corporation and are archived by the University of California's UCDATA. Neither of these organizations is responsible for the analysis or interpretation of the data appearing here. Readers may obtain the data by writing to the archivist at UCDATA, University of California, Berkeley, California 94720, USA. 6. The polls were: No. 7703 (June 1977); No. 7801 (January 1978); No. 7902 (May 1979); No. 8006 (October 1980); No. 8104 (October 1981); No. 8401 (February 1984); No. 8903 (July 1989); No. 9004 (August 1990). 7. Couch, A. & Keniston, K., Yeasayers and naysayers: Agreeing response set as a personality variable. J. Abnormal Soc. Psychol., 60 (1969) 151-74. 8. Page, B. I. & Shapiro, R. Y., The Rational Public. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1992. 9. The data are not shown here. See California Polls 7703, 7801, 8004, 8104, 8903, and 9004. See Ref. 13 for national data. 10. Dunlap, R. E. & Scarce, R., Trends: Environmental problems and protections. Public Opinion Quarterly, 55 (1991) 651-72. 11. Harris, L., A call for tougher--not weaker--antipollution laws. Business Week, 24 January (1983) 87. 12. Portnoy, P. R., Natural resources and the environment. In The Reagan Record (ed. J. L. Palmer & I. V. Sawhill). Ballinger, Cambridge, MA, 1984.
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13. Mayer, W. G., The Changing American Mind. University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor, MI, 1992. 14. Bennett, S., Trends in Americans' pofitical information, 1967-1987. American Politics Quarterly, 17 (1989) 422-35. 15. Delli, C., Michael, X. & Keeter, S., Stability and change in the US public's knowledge of politics. Public Opinion Quarterly, 55 (1991) 583-612. 16. Smith, E. R. A. N., The Unchanging American Voter. University of California Press, Berkeley, CA, 1989. 17. Gallup Poll Report, No. 305, February 1991, p. 35. 18. Van Liere, K. D. & Dunlap, R. E., The social bases of environmental concern: A review of hypotheses, explanations and empirical evidence. Public Opinion Quarterly, 44 (1980) 181-97. 19. Verba, S. & Nie, N. H., Participation in America. Harper and Row, New York, 1980. 20. Freudenberg, W. R. & Gramling, R., Oil in Troubled Waters. State University of New York Press, New York, 1994. 21. Eiser, J. R., Spears, R., Webey, P. & Van der Pligt, J., Local residents' attitudes to oil and nuclear developments. Social Behavior, 3 (1988) 237-53. 22. Van der Pligt, J., Eiser, J. R. & Spears, R., Attitudes toward nuclear energy: Familiarity and salience. Environment and Behavior, 18 (1986) 75-93. 23. California Poll 8903. The counties were the same as used for Fig. 7--San Luis Obispo county to Orange county. 24. Lankford, J., Vote split on Goleta as city, polls show. Santa Barbara News-Press, 23 October 1990, p. A1. 25. The surveys of representative cross-sections of Santa Barbara adults were conducted by Richard Hertz Consulting. The questions were: 'Do you strongly support, moderately support, moderately oppose or strongly oppose oil drilling off the Santa Barbara coast?' (October 1988) and 'Do you favor or oppose additional oil drilling off the Santa Barbara coast?' (October 1990). 26. Abramson, P. R., Political Attitudes in America: Formation and Change. W. H. Freeman, San Francisco, 1983. 27. Morrison, D. E., How and why environmental consciousness has trickled down. In Distributional Conflicts in Environmental-Resource Policy (ed. A. Schnaiberg, N. Watts & K. Zimmermann). St Martin's Press, New York, 1986. 28. California Polls 8903 and 9004. 29. California Polls 7902 and 8002.
APPENDIX: C O D I N G OF V A R I A B L E S IN L O G I T EQUATION Party Identification: 0 = s t r o n g Republican, 1 = w e a k Republican, 2 = independent leaning Republican, 3 = pure independent,
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E. R. A. N. Smith, S. R. Garcia
4 = i n d e p e n d e n t leaning D e m o c r a t , 5 = weak D e m o c r a t , 6 = s t r o n g Democrat Ideology: 0 = strong conservative, 1 = weak conservative, 2 = m o d e r a t e , 3 = weak liberal, 4 = strong liberal Education: 1 = 0-11 years school, 2 = high school graduate, trade/vocational school, 3 = 1-2 years college, 4 = 3 - 4 years college, college grad, 5 = 5-6 years college, masters degree, 6 = graduate work past masters Age: 1 = 18-29, 2 = 30-45, 3 = 46-60, 4 = 61 or older Black: 1 if black, 0 if not Hispanic: 1 if Hispanic, 0 if not.
0964-5691(95)0000g-9
Evolving California opinion on offshore oil development E r i c R. A. N. S m i t h ° & Sonia R. G a r c i a b ° Department of Political Science, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA 93106, USA b Department of Political Science, St Mary's University of San Antonio, San Antonio, TX 78228, USA (Received 11 October 1993; accepted in revised form 15 February 1995)
ABSTRACT Whether oil companies should be allowed to drill more oil wells along the California coast is the subject of a great deal of conflict. We examine public opinion on the question using a series of public opinion polls o f Californians. We find that public support for coastal oil development has sharply declined since 1980. The groups most supportive of drilling are conservatives, Republicans, the least well educated, the old, and non-whites. Surprisingly, proximity to offshore oil development is not related to support. These findings give us a basis for predicting that support for further oil drilling will continue to decline. Finally, we show that the public's attitudes on energy policy do not lead to any practical energy policy.
1. E V O L V I N G C A L I F O R N I A OPINION ON O F F S H O R E OIL DEVELOPMENT The question of whether oil companies should be allowed to drill more oil wells along the California coast of the USA has been a subject of repeated conflicts over the last century. ~ When oil companies pioneered offshore oil drilling at Summerland, California, in 1896, they were met with protests by local residents. 2 Other protests followed from time to time over the next decades. In 1955, the state of California responded by creating its first offshore oil sanctuary, prohibiting drilling in an area off the coast of Santa Barbara. 3 In 1969, a Union Oil platform spilled 4.2 million gallons of crude oil into the Santa Barbara Channel and helped to launch both the environmental movement and a vehement local effort to prevent any new oil development along the California 41
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E. R. A. N. Smith, S. R. Garcia
coast. During his 1988 presidential campaign, President Bush reacted to the continuing anti-oil drilling protests by declaring a temporary moratorium on further federal government oil leases along the coast. That moratorium is set to expire in 1997. At the root of these protests and of the government responses lies public opinion. Although public opinion certainly influences government decisions about offshore oil development, little research has been done about what the public thinks? We seek to fill that gap by analyzing public attitudes toward offshore oil drilling along the California coast. In this paper, we will discuss what we know about the opinions of Californians based on a series of California Polls conducted from 19771990. 5 The polls were all designed to be representative cross-sections of California adults. 6 We will discuss trends in opinion over the last 15 years, patterns of opinion today, and what one might reasonably expect opinion to be in the future. In order to understand opinions on offshore oil development, we will also examine opinions on related energy and environmental issues. 2. OPINION TRENDS From 1977-1980, the California public favored offshore oil drilling (see Fig. 1). Possibly urged on by the oil price increases resulting from the OPEC embargoes of the 1970s, a majority clearly supported additional coastal oil development. After 1980, however, public support for offshore oil development along the California coast declined substantially. In 1980, 60% of California adults agreed with the statement, 'Oil eO
60
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fig. 1. Support for more coastal oil drillingin California.
Evolving California opinion on offshore oil development
43
companies should be allowed to drill more oil and gas wells in state tidelands along the California seacoast.' By 1990, that number had dropped to only 34%. A few comments are needed to help interpret the data. First, small differences in how questions are worded can cause differences in the responses. The California Poll wrote these questions in an agree/disagree format. One result of asking questions in this format is that some people tend to agree irrespective of the content of the question. 7 That is, people with weak opinions tend to agree with statements, no matter what the statements are. It follows that these questions probably tend to favor drilling more oil. Had they been reworded in the opposite direction so that people were asked to agree with a ban on future offshore oil drilling, support for oil drilling would probably have been lower than the level shown by these questions. Second, the dip in support for offshore oil in 1989 is almost certainly influenced by the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska in March 1989. The California Poll asked its 1989 question in July. So what we see in 1989 is probably a short-term shift in opinion as people think about the recent oil-related disaster. By 1990, the Exxon Valdez no longer jumps to mind when people are asked about offshore oil drilling, so the polls register an increase in support for drilling after 1989. However, we should note that the 1990 level of support is lower than the 1984 level. From a long-term perspective, the post-1980 decline in support for oil drilling seems to have continued. Third, in these data we see a strong trend away from support for oil drilling. Trends or changes in public opinion are uncommon) When looking at series of public opinion surveys over time, the usual outcome is that there is no change at all. The most thorough investigation of change in public opinion over time, revealed what the authors described as a 'remarkable degree of stability in Americans' collective policy preferences') The authors of this investigation collected all the public opinion time series available from the major commercial and academic survey organizations from 1935 to 1990 and discovered that fewer than half of them changed, and when they did change, most of those changes were quite modest. Fewer than 7% of all public opinion items changed as much as 20% (the size of the 1980-1990 change in support for oil drilling) and fewer than 2% changed as much as 30% (the size of the shift in attitudes toward oil drilling if we measure from 1980 to 1989). By those standards, this 10 year shift from support to opposition to oil drilling is unusual. Fourth, the trend in opinion toward offshore oil drilling parallels other, weaker, trends in environmental issues. During the Reagan
44
E. R. A. N. Smith, S. R. Garcia
presidency (1981-1988), public opinion on several issues, which were regularly the subjects of national surveys, moved in a pro-conservation direction (although the changes were not as great as the change found in attitudes toward offshore oil drilling). For instance, both in California and in the USA as a whole, we see a trend in attitudes away from support for nuclear power plants as a source for electricity? A common interpretation of these trends is that the anti-environmentalist stands of the Reagan administration and such prominent policy makers as Interior Secretary James Watt produced an environmental backlash in public opinion. 1°-12 Another common interpretation of these trends is that public support for energy development became unusually high during the 1970s because of the 1973 Arab-Israeli War, the 1974 OPEC boycott, and the second surge in OPEC oil prices in 1979. When oil prices stabilized and the public's attention moved on to other matters, public enthusiasm for further energy development waned--producing a trend of declining support for such measures as increased offshore oil development, s'13 We believe that both explanations are probably partly correct. The implication of these parallel trends is that people are probably not responding to the survey questions solely based on their knowledge of the risks and benefits entailed by offshore oil development. Instead, people are probably responding to the questions based both on their knowledge of oil development and on their general environmentalist attitudes. Indeed, given past research showing that most people do not know many facts about any specific policy decisions, ~4-~6 it would be surprising if the California public were very knowledgeable about offshore oil development. The public is certainly not knowledgeable about other aspects of oil and energy policy, as demonstrated by a January 1991 Gallup Poll, which showed that even during the fighting in the Gulf War, only 50% of the public knew that the USA had to import foreign oil to meet its energy needs. 17 Therefore, it seems reasonable to suspect that the sources of these attitudes do not lie solely in specific knowledge and beliefs about oil development p e r se.
3. PATTERNS OF SUPPORT AND OPPOSITION TO OFFSHORE OIL DRILLING Although the level of support for offshore development changed over time, the pattern of supporters and opponents was fairly consistent across time--appearing from the 1970s to 1990. This pattern is typical of attitudes toward most environmental issues. TM
Evolving California opinion on offshore oil development
45
40 U
15 10 8 0
Fig. 2. Support for drillingby self-identifiedideology. The pattern of support consists of six population characteristics which correlate with attitudes toward offshore oil drilling. The characteristics are: self-identified ideology, party identification, education, age, race/ethnicity and region of the state. Each of these variables----except region--makes a significant, independent contribution to explaining attitudes toward oil drilling. In the description that follows, we begin with simple cross-tabulations and then present a multivariate model to show how these variables collectively influence attitudes toward offshore oil drilling. All of the bivariate relationships we discuss in the following tables are statistically significant at p < 0.05. Conservatives are more likely to support offshore drilling than self-identified liberals. Self-identified ideology is measured with a five-point scale from strong conservative to strong liberal. As Fig. 2 shows, conservatives are over four times more likely to support drilling than liberals (44% as opposed to 9%). Republicans are more likely than Democrats to support offshore drilling. Party identification is measured with a seven-point scale ranging from strong Republican to strong Democrat. As Fig. 3 shows, Republicans are far more supportive of drilling than Democrats, with strong Republicans being the most supportive at 48%. Although independent Democrats are the least likely to favor more drilling at 18% support, all types of Democrats oppose drilling more than any type of Republican. The least educated are more likely to support offshore oil drilling than the well educated. As Fig. 4 shows, 47% of those with less than a high school education support drilling, but only 18% of those with educations beyond a Master's degree support it. Given the higher voter turnout rate and greater level of political activism among the well educated, this relationship has important political implications for
46
E. R. A. N. Smith, S. R. Garcia
eu'Rop
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Fig. 3. Support for drilling by party identification.
future oil development. 19 Those who are most strongly opposed to additional development are those to whom elected officials tend to pay the most attention. When it comes to age, the old are significantly more likely to support offshore oil drilling than the young. As Fig. 5 shows, those who were 46 or older in 1990 were far more supportive of additional drilling than those 45 and under. Among racial and ethnic groups, African Americans are the most likely to support offshore oil drilling at 47%, whites are the least likely at 33%, and Latinos and Asians fall in between (see Fig. 6). In the multivariate analysis discussed below, these differences are largely, but not entirely, explained by the other variables discussed above-especially education. People residing in one of the four southern Californian coastal counties near which offshore oil development exists---an area stretching
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Fig. 4. Support for drilling by education.
M.A
Evolving California opinion on offshore oil development
47
45. 40.
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Fig. 5. Supportfor drilling by age.
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Fig. 6. Supportfor drilling by race and ethnicity. roughly 280 miles along the coast and 25 miles inland from San Luis Obispo through Orange county--are more likely to support offshore oil drilling than those living elsewhere in the state, by a margin of 39% to 32% (see Fig. 7). This may seem surprising since local opposition to oil
In
l Fig. 7. Supportfor drilling by region of state.
48
E. R. A. N. Smith, S. R. Garcia
development has been very intense in many of these coastal oilproducing areas. 2° However, our finding is consistent with previous studies in England which have shown that being close to oil wells or nuclear power plants makes people somewhat more positively inclined toward them.2a,z2 In the case of California, these differences seem to be entirely the result of the other variables discussed above. That is, in our multivariate analysis, region makes no statistically significant difference. Because our finding that proximity to offshore oil development or to the coast makes no difference to people's attitudes surprised us, we examined several different measures of proximity. We speculated that a different measure of proximity might be related to opinions on offshore oil development. In addition to the breakdown in Fig. 7, we looked at differences between those living in coastal counties and noncoastal counties. We also separated the more rural/suburban oil-producing counties (San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara and Ventura) from the more urban counties (Los Angeles and Orange) to see if those groups of counties differed from one another or from the rest of the state. Using zip codes, we looked at differences between those living within 20 miles of the coast or within 20 miles of the coast in a county with offshore oil development from those living elsewhere. In only one of our analyses was there a significant difference once ideology, party identification, education, age, and race/ethnicity were controlled. In a 1989 survey, residents living within 20 miles of the coast in an oil-producing county were slightly more likely to support additional offshore oil drilling than those living elsewhere in the state. 23 This category was not very large, however, consisting of only 66 people in a sample of 993 (6.6%). In short, we are reasonably confident that neither proximity to the coast nor proximity to offshore oil development influences general support for further development. If proximity does make any difference, the evidence suggests that it is quite small and that being close to the coast increases support for development. Of course, proximity to a specific proposed oil development may influence support or opposition to that development. We examined only support as measured by the California Poll questions, which refer to additional coastal drilling without specifying exact location. Fortunately for our investigation, two surveys of Santa Barbara county residents, conducted in 1988 and 1990, addressed this issue by asking questions about support for 'oil drilling off the Santa Barbara c o a s t ' . 24,25 In those years, there were highly publicized proposals to drill additional offshore wells along the Santa Barbara coast. The first survey yielded 39% in favor of drilling and 54% opposed; the second yielded 37% in favor and 54% opposed. These numbers are remarkably close to the 34% in
Evolving California opinion on offshore oil development
49
TABLE 1
A logistic regression model of support for oil development Variable
Coe~icient
Standard error
Intercept
- 0.34
0.43
Party identification Ideology Education Age Hispanic Black Oil county
- 0-13 - 0.21 - 0.09 0.016 0.48 0.71 0.17
0.05 0.10 0-04 0.006 0.32 0.44 0.20
Standardized estimate
- 0-16 - 0.13 - 0.11 0.15 0.08 0.09 0.05
N = 540. -2 × log likelihood = 650.4. Somers' D = 0.34. Source: data from California Poll 91304(August 1990). favor of additional drilling found in the m o r e general 1990 California Poll questions. In sum, these data point toward the same conclusion as do the California Poll d a t a m p r o x i m i t y to the coast or potential drilling sites makes little or no difference in public opinion. T o complete our analysis of these data, we estimated a logistic regression model with support for coastal oil drilling as our d e p e n d e n t variable and the six characteristics discussed above as our independent variables. The results of the model, shown in Table 1, are consistent with the bivariate results discussed above. Ideology, party identification, education, and age all have large, statistically significant effects in the expected directions. The d u m m y variables for being black or Latino are only of borderline significance, but a significance test on the pair of variables shows that together they do make a statistically significant contribution to explaining support for offshore oil drilling. In other words, as a coalition, blacks and Latinos do explain support or lack of support for offshore oil drilling. Living in a coastal, oil-producing county does not have any effect. That coefficient is small and not even close to being statistically significant. Overall, the m o d e l fits the data reasonably well, as indicated by the Somers' D of 0.34. 4. T H E I M P L I C A T I O N S OF T H E P A T T E R N S T w o of the above patterns merit particular comment. Most of these variables and their effects should remain roughly constant over time (e.g. ideology, party identification) and therefore offer us no basis for
50
E. R. A. N. Smith, S. R. Garcia
predicting any changes in future opinion. That is not the case with education and age. The distribution of education and the relationship between age and support for oil development should both change in predictable ways in coming years. Because of this, we can make some tentative predictions about future attitudes toward oil drilling off the California coast. The process of generational change can be seen at work in the age distribution. Leading studies of socialization tell us that people acquire most of their attitudes (e.g. environmentalism) when they are young (i.e. 10-25 years old) and keep those attitudes roughly unchanged throughout their l i v e s . 26 According to this line of reasoning, the pro-development attitudes that we see among the old in our data are largely the result of prevailing attitudes that these people learned in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s. In contrast, the pro-environmentalist attitudes of the young can be attributed to the prevailing attitudes since the beginning of the environmentalist movement in the 1960s. Other workers27 who have examined environmental attitudes argue that the consequence of this generational pattern of change is that in the years to come, older people with pro-development attitudes will be replaced by younger people with pro-environment attitudes. Therefore, we can expect attitudes in the population as a whole to become less supportive of further oil development as older supporters of oil drilling are replaced by younger opponents. The changing distribution of education should also be expected to have a generational impact on attitudes toward environmental issues. The average level of education in California has been increasing steadily since World War II and is expected to continue to increase in years to come. This shift is driven by the rise of public education in California (as it is all across the nation). Young, well educated people are entering the electorate on one end of the age distribution, while old, poorly educated people are passing on at the other end. Along with their higher educations, the young bring environmentalist attitudes into the electorate. That is, as we noted above, the well educated who are entering the electorate are likely to oppose offshore oil development more than the poorly educated who are leaving the electorate. Therefore, this process of generational replacement raises the average educational level of the state and, at the same time, is likely to increase the proportion of environmentally inclined citizens who oppose additional offshore oil development. Let us sum up the implications of our data. As the years pass, older, less well educated people who acquired their attitudes before the environmentalist movement began in the 1960s will be replaced by
Evolving California opinion on offshore oil development
51
younger, more well educated people who acquired their attitudes after the environmentalist movement was well underway. Because of this generational change, we can expect a slow shift toward less support for oil drilling in the future. In any given year, this change will be quite small, but over the course of the next two decades, we should expect a moderate shift--large enough to have a substantial political impact. Let us qualify this prediction of growing environmentalism. We have been making an argument which some social scientists would describe as 'Demography is Destiny'. That is, we have been suggesting that demographic changes allow us to predict the future. They do, to some extent. However, a wide range of factors could potentially overwhelm the demographic tides. The environmentalist movement is, itself, an example. The huge difference in attitudes between the young and old largely reflects the success of the environmentalists. Predictions about environmental attitudes based on data from the 1950s would have proven false within a decade. Other social or political events could similarly alter the direction of attitude change and render our present predictions inaccurate. Another energy crisis such as the OPEC oil embargo, for instance, might alter future opinions on energy issues. In short, our predictions can only be tentative, yet hopefully contribute to the understanding of the overall dynamics of attitude change on environmentalism.
5. ENERGY POLICY AND THE ROLE OF OIL Looking only at the results of single survey questions can be a misleading way to judge the public's preferences in broad policy areas. If we were to look only at questions about support for offshore oil drilling, we might imagine that the public holds a consistent set of preferences regarding energy policies and that their preferences about offshore oil development fit into a coherent strategy for dealing with energy problems. Unfortunately, that is not the case. In order to understand the public's attitudes toward oil development and energy policies, we must go beyond a narrow focus on whether to increase offshore oil drilling. When we do so by taking a look at a range of energy questions, we do not find much evidence of a coherent strategy. The following survey findings from two 1989 and 1990 California Polls suggest that the public's attitude toward the role of oil development in energy policy has seeming inconsistencies.28 The public objects to more oil development in California, but the public also recognizes
52
E. R. A. N. Smith, S. R. Garcia TABLE 2
Attitudes on various energy issues How serious do you think this country's energy crisis is right now? (1989) Extremely serious 46% Somewhat serious 41% Not too serious 9% No opinion 2% What about the offshore coastal areas of the USA. How much oil is there that could be discovered and developed in these areas? (1989) A great deal 27% Quite a bit 20% Some 19% Only a little 9% No opinion 25% How important do you believe it is for the USA to cut down on the amount of oil that it imports from foreign countries? (1989) Extremely important 48% Somewhat important 37% Not too important 11% No opinion 3% We can have oil drilling in offshore coastal areas and at the same time provide adequate environmental safeguards Agree 50% Disagree 48% No opinion 2% Source: data from California Poll 8903 (July 1989) and 91304(August 1990). the need for m o r e oil and does not want it to c o m e from foreign sources. The first question in Table 2 shows that in July 1989, 87% of Californians considered the country's energy situation to be e x t r e m e l y serious or s o m e w h a t serious. These results m a t c h those of a series of earlier surveys f r o m 1979 to 1984, in which 89% or m o r e of the California Poll's r e s p o n d e n t s agreed with the statement: ' E v e n with strict conservation, we will have to develop a lot m o r e energy sources to m e e t this country's future energy needs.' In short, the public recognizes the energy 'crisis' and regards it as serious. The second and third questions in Table 2 suggest a solution to the energy shortage. T h e public thinks that domestic oil supplies are available and that the U S A should not continue to rely on foreign energy sources. Finally, the last question in Table 2 (from A u g u s t 1990) shows the results of a question concerning safety. H a l f of the public thinks that we can have offshore oil drilling and provide a d e q u a t e environmental safeguards at the same time.
Evolving California opinion on offshore oil development
53
We may summarize these results as follows. Large numbers of people (a) think the energy situation is serious, (b) do not want to solve it by importing foreign oil, (c) think it can be solved by drilling more oil in USA coastal waters and (d) think coastal drilling is reasonably safe. Yet a substantial majority opposes further oil drilling. Comparing the safety and support questions offers an interesting insight. In 1990, 50% said that further oil development was safe, yet only 34% supported it. That is, a substantial number of people believe that further oil drilling is safe, but undesirable. These people must have other reasons for opposing offshore oil development. Although our data do not offer us any proof, we would guess that aesthetic judgements explain these people's objections to further oil development. Other solutions to the energy shortage problem are possible, of course, but we have no evidence in our survey data to show which ones, if any, Californians regard as desirable. Additional drilling for oil in 'government parklands and forest reserves' is rejected by majorities. Nuclear power is equally unpopular. Solar power research was supported in the late 1970s and early 1980s, but about half of the California Poll respondents agreed that 'getting solar energy to a point at which it can generate substantial portions of our electrical power needs will take at least twenty years. '29 In short, Californians think that they need the energy, but they do not want to produce it in California. There is an obvious solution to these seeming inconsistencies. Californians may simply want to have the benefits of plentiful, inexpensive oil and other forms of energy without bearing the costs of having it produced in California. Unfortunately, the California Poll did not include questions about people's attitudes to increased oil production in such places as Alaska, Louisiana, or Texas. So we cannot say with certainty that Californians would be more supportive of oil development elsewhere.
6. C O N C L U D I N G COMMENTS Public opinion is a powerful force in politics. Changes in public opinion as large as the changes in Californians' attitudes toward offshore oil development are rare. For these reasons, the corresponding shift in public policy--to a temporary moratorium on granting additional offshore oil leases until the year 1997--is hardly surprising, a Given the likely future course of public opinion, away from support for additional oil development, we expect a great deal of pressure on elected officials to make the temporary moratorium a permanent one. If there are
54
E. R. A. N. Smith, S. R. Garcia
future oil shortages such as those of the 1970s, complete with sharp price hikes and lines at gas stations, both public opinion and policies may change. Without such shortages, however, we doubt that either public opinion or government policies will swing toward greater offshore oil development in coming years. ACKNOWLEDGEMENT This research was supported by the Minerals Management Service, US Department of the Interior, under MMS Agreement No. 14-35-000130471. The views and conclusions contained in this document are those of the authors and should not be interpreted as necessarily representing the official policies, either express or implied, of the US Government. REFERENCES 1. Cicin-Sain, B., California and ocean management: Problems and opportunities. Coastal Management, 18 (1990) 311-35. 2. Paddock, R. C., Drilling advance rekindles Santa Barbara oil wars. Los Angeles Times, 5 December 1994. 3. Lima, J. T., The Politics o f Offshore Energy Development. Unpublished dissertation, University of California, Santa Barbara. 4. Strand, P. J., The energy issue: Partisan characteristics. Environ. Behav., 13 (1981) 509-19. 5. The California Polls used in this paper were conducted by the Held Research Corporation and are archived by the University of California's UCDATA. Neither of these organizations is responsible for the analysis or interpretation of the data appearing here. Readers may obtain the data by writing to the archivist at UCDATA, University of California, Berkeley, California 94720, USA. 6. The polls were: No. 7703 (June 1977); No. 7801 (January 1978); No. 7902 (May 1979); No. 8006 (October 1980); No. 8104 (October 1981); No. 8401 (February 1984); No. 8903 (July 1989); No. 9004 (August 1990). 7. Couch, A. & Keniston, K., Yeasayers and naysayers: Agreeing response set as a personality variable. J. Abnormal Soc. Psychol., 60 (1969) 151-74. 8. Page, B. I. & Shapiro, R. Y., The Rational Public. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1992. 9. The data are not shown here. See California Polls 7703, 7801, 8004, 8104, 8903, and 9004. See Ref. 13 for national data. 10. Dunlap, R. E. & Scarce, R., Trends: Environmental problems and protections. Public Opinion Quarterly, 55 (1991) 651-72. 11. Harris, L., A call for tougher--not weaker--antipollution laws. Business Week, 24 January (1983) 87. 12. Portnoy, P. R., Natural resources and the environment. In The Reagan Record (ed. J. L. Palmer & I. V. Sawhill). Ballinger, Cambridge, MA, 1984.
Evolving California opinion on offshore oil development
55
13. Mayer, W. G., The Changing American Mind. University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor, MI, 1992. 14. Bennett, S., Trends in Americans' pofitical information, 1967-1987. American Politics Quarterly, 17 (1989) 422-35. 15. Delli, C., Michael, X. & Keeter, S., Stability and change in the US public's knowledge of politics. Public Opinion Quarterly, 55 (1991) 583-612. 16. Smith, E. R. A. N., The Unchanging American Voter. University of California Press, Berkeley, CA, 1989. 17. Gallup Poll Report, No. 305, February 1991, p. 35. 18. Van Liere, K. D. & Dunlap, R. E., The social bases of environmental concern: A review of hypotheses, explanations and empirical evidence. Public Opinion Quarterly, 44 (1980) 181-97. 19. Verba, S. & Nie, N. H., Participation in America. Harper and Row, New York, 1980. 20. Freudenberg, W. R. & Gramling, R., Oil in Troubled Waters. State University of New York Press, New York, 1994. 21. Eiser, J. R., Spears, R., Webey, P. & Van der Pligt, J., Local residents' attitudes to oil and nuclear developments. Social Behavior, 3 (1988) 237-53. 22. Van der Pligt, J., Eiser, J. R. & Spears, R., Attitudes toward nuclear energy: Familiarity and salience. Environment and Behavior, 18 (1986) 75-93. 23. California Poll 8903. The counties were the same as used for Fig. 7--San Luis Obispo county to Orange county. 24. Lankford, J., Vote split on Goleta as city, polls show. Santa Barbara News-Press, 23 October 1990, p. A1. 25. The surveys of representative cross-sections of Santa Barbara adults were conducted by Richard Hertz Consulting. The questions were: 'Do you strongly support, moderately support, moderately oppose or strongly oppose oil drilling off the Santa Barbara coast?' (October 1988) and 'Do you favor or oppose additional oil drilling off the Santa Barbara coast?' (October 1990). 26. Abramson, P. R., Political Attitudes in America: Formation and Change. W. H. Freeman, San Francisco, 1983. 27. Morrison, D. E., How and why environmental consciousness has trickled down. In Distributional Conflicts in Environmental-Resource Policy (ed. A. Schnaiberg, N. Watts & K. Zimmermann). St Martin's Press, New York, 1986. 28. California Polls 8903 and 9004. 29. California Polls 7902 and 8002.
APPENDIX: C O D I N G OF V A R I A B L E S IN L O G I T EQUATION Party Identification: 0 = s t r o n g Republican, 1 = w e a k Republican, 2 = independent leaning Republican, 3 = pure independent,
56
E. R. A. N. Smith, S. R. Garcia
4 = i n d e p e n d e n t leaning D e m o c r a t , 5 = weak D e m o c r a t , 6 = s t r o n g Democrat Ideology: 0 = strong conservative, 1 = weak conservative, 2 = m o d e r a t e , 3 = weak liberal, 4 = strong liberal Education: 1 = 0-11 years school, 2 = high school graduate, trade/vocational school, 3 = 1-2 years college, 4 = 3 - 4 years college, college grad, 5 = 5-6 years college, masters degree, 6 = graduate work past masters Age: 1 = 18-29, 2 = 30-45, 3 = 46-60, 4 = 61 or older Black: 1 if black, 0 if not Hispanic: 1 if Hispanic, 0 if not.