Heavenly Persuasion: Understanding the Influence of Religious Messaging on Housing Policy Support

Not in My Backyard (NIMBY) sentiments have become the subject of recent scholarship in an attempt to understand how they impact housing developments. The three alternative explanations for NIMBYism include opposition to developers, an expression of economic self-interest, and racially based symbolic politics. One area of literature that has been critically understudied is the impact religion has on attitudes towards affordable housing. This research seeks to add to the affordable housing development literature and fill the gap in Yes In God’s Backyard (YIGBY) research by testing the effects of religious messaging on college students. It seeks to answer the following question—if people are so opposed to affordable housing, how do we shift their attitudes to become more supportive? To examine the impact of religious messaging on attitudes towards affordable housing, a survey experiment was conducted on a sample of 188 Pepperdine students. Approximately half of the respondents were in the experimental group and were given a bible passage to read prior to answering questions about affordable housing and housing developments. Independent t-tests run on each dependent variable showed no statistically significant difference between the means of the control group and the experimental group. The results of OLS regressions for all respondents showed that the variables for religiosity and partisanship both had statistically significant relationships (p