RAPID: Impacts of COVID-19 Pandemic on Rural Attitudes about Federal Aid and Recovery

The scale of the COVID-19 pandemic necessitated historic action by the federal government to stem social and economic fallout, as demonstrated by federal relief programs exceeding $2.2 trillion. These and other federal interventions in the U.S. economy and society represent a potential shift in the role of government. Yet public opposition to federal programs is historically strong in many rural areas of the country. Given the magnitude of the pandemic, how will this crisis affect long standing attitudes towards federal aid programs and the role of government in society in rural areas? Furthermore, how will public attitudes towards federal aid in rural communities shape how much aid is allocated, what form it takes, and how it is received by rural communities? This project examines the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on public attitudes towards federal aid and the role of government in rural U.S. communities. Findings from the project will be useful to leaders at several levels of government as they work with their communities to distribute aid to facilitate recovery. As such, the findings will also be useful to leaders within the context of future pandemics or other extreme events, thus promoting U.S. safety and security.

The COVID-19 pandemic has necessitated historic investment in federal relief programs, and yet such programs have often been viewed negatively in rural areas of the country. This project will address this development through a new two-wave representative survey of residents in rural communities across eleven states in the western United States (Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Washington, Wyoming). Each wave will consist of 1,200 respondents and will be conducted through a mix of telephone and online outreach by a professional survey firm. The first wave will be conducted immediately, in the midst of the pandemic, and the second wave in spring 2021. The survey will be supplemented with 33 semi-structured interviews (three per state) with government staff, elected officials, and NGO leaders, all based in counties sampled through the survey. These interviews will augment information from rural communities and will provide a macro-level picture of how communities have been impacted by the pandemic. Findings from the project will inform sociological theories related to changes in social ideology in the context of extreme events, as well as theories explaining political and moral identities. In addition, the project integrates findings and concepts related to heretofore largely distinct literatures, one involving rural sociology and the other involving disaster research.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.