Perceptions of community responses to the unconventional gas industry: The importance of community agency

When rural communities face major changes whether due to natural disasters, decline of old industries or the development of new ones, some appear to adapt well to the changes while others languish. From an extensive literature review, Brown and Westaway (2011) argue that community resilience, wellbeing, capacity, and capabilities inform agency, which in turn underlies different community responses to change. Further, it needs to be recognised that not everyone within a community is equally affected and groups of residents might perceive the community's response differently. To empirically examine the factors underlying five different perceptions of a community's response to change (resisting, not coping, only just coping, adapting, or transforming) a detailed telephone survey was conducted with 400 residents of the Western Downs region in Queensland, Australia, a rural area experiencing widespread changes in its social profile, economy, and landscape due to the rapid construction of unconventional gas infrastructure such as wells each kilometre, condensers, and pipelines. Most respondents thought the community was either adapting or only just coping with the changes. Two orthogonal factors underlay respondents' perceptions: community functioning and social engagement. Community functioning was by far the stronger factor and key aspects of community agency were reflected in four of community functioning's six dimensions: 1) community resilience actions such as planning and leadership, 2) collective efficacy, 3) community trust, and 4) inclusive decision making processes and citizen voice. High ratings of community functioning were associated with transforming followed by adapting, only just coping, resisting and not coping, in that order. Perceptions of the community's response were not predicted by demographic differences but the social engagement factor suggested that those with stronger social networks were more likely to think the community was not coping whereas those with weak social networks thought it was resisting, perhaps because they obtained their impressions from the Australian media which publicises public resistance to unconventional gas. The results support Brown and Westaway's analysis and also suggest that communities undergoing rapid change need support to be able to work with governments and industry and to facilitate key aspects of community agency.