LYNCH, Kathy Louise - 1984

Factors Influencing Attitudes Toward Development

This thesis examines relationships between citizen's attitudes toward community development and selected social, economic and geographic factors of a community. Particularly, attitudes to population growth, industrial development and commercial development are analyzed. The community under study is Port Hastings, Nova Scotia; a questionnaire survey is used to collect pertinent information; and the statistical test used for analysis is chi-square.

The results indicate that some factors seem to influence attitudes more than others. The following relationships are found to be significant:

1. Community integration and attitudes to population growth.
2. Dwelling type, distance travelled to work and residence location (all taken separately) and attitudes to industrial development.
3. Residence location and attitudes to commercial development. In addition, there are two relationships: residence location and attitude to commercial development, and the locale where a person purchases high order goods and attitude to commercial development, where the significance is questionable and further work is required to clarify the significance. As a related issue, the research demonstrates the importance of citizen participation in the planning process.