The Losers of Ecological Transitions: Rural and Urban Support for Environmental Policies in Spain

Ongoing ecological transition policies are conflictive, especially in rural areas. Environmental policies find more opposition in rural areas and more support in urban centres, but the factors that explain this gap are still under discussion. This paper explores which factors may account for the difference between urban and rural dwellers’ support for environmental policies using original data from the Spanish survey of the Rural-Urban Divide in Europe project. We confront and test two different explanations. On the one hand, the gap has been explained through Inglehart’s postmaterial values theory. People living in peripheral rural areas – which tend to be backgrounds with lower economic security – could be prioritising material over postmaterial goals like protecting the environment. Alternatively, from an environmental justice approach, rural dwellers would show higher opposition to environmental policies because they perceive to be unfairly assuming most of the burdens of ecological transitions. We explore attitudes towards five policies: promoting the construction of renewable energy facilities, raising the taxes on gasoline and diesel, restrictions on the circulation of cars and motorbikes in cities to promote the circulation of pedestrians and cyclists, restrictions on the use of natural resources in protected areas for conservation, and banning the use of pesticides and antibiotics in agriculture and livestock. Using Oaxaca decomposition analysis, we find only the perception of harm of environmental policies helps explain the rural-urban gap in support for environmental policies, but not environmental concern or postmaterial values. This suggests the environmental justice framework is more adequate to understand rural opposition to environmental policies than Inglehart’s postmaterialism theory, at least in the case of Spain. Rural dwellers show less support for environmental policies because they feel they are on the losing side of ecological transitions and not because they care less about the environment or because have lower levels of postmaterial values.