What Do They Know and How Do They Know It? An Examination of Citizen Awareness of Context

The connection between the individual and his or her aggregate geographic environment, usually defined as the neighborhood, is a key component of the contextual model of social influence. However, there is substantial anecdotal evidence that people have very little knowledge or connection to their n...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inAmerican politics research Vol. 33; no. 4; pp. 492 - 520
Main Authors Baybeck, Brady, McClurg, Scott D.
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Thousand Oaks, CA SAGE Publications 01.07.2005
SAGE PUBLICATIONS, INC
Subjects
Geography
Knowledge
Neighborhoods
Political behavior
Social Influence
political knowledge
political context
neighborhood effects
South Bend
political behavior
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Summary:The connection between the individual and his or her aggregate geographic environment, usually defined as the neighborhood, is a key component of the contextual model of social influence. However, there is substantial anecdotal evidence that people have very little knowledge or connection to their neighborhood. In this article, the authors explore the connection by using data from the South Bend Study to answer two questions: What do people know about objective conditions of their neighborhoods? Second, do these conditions influence perceptions people have of their neighborhoods?The authors find that (a) people have a good deal of knowledge about the objective conditions, and (b) even after controlling for individual factors, these conditions positively influence how people perceive their status within the neighborhood. In short, there is a connection between the individual and the geographic context.
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ISSN:1532-673X
1552-3373
DOI:10.1177/1532673X04270934