Whatever floats your vote: understanding voter support for public port infrastructure investments

Authors

Jarron VanCeylon, University of Rhode Island
Corey Lang, University of Rhode IslandFollow
Austin Becker, University of Rhode IslandFollow

Document Type

Article

Date of Original Version

2020

Abstract

Ports are a cornerstone of the local, state, and national economy, especially for coastal cities. However, ports face growing economic challenges that require infrastructure financing, and a relevant avenue of securing funds is through government assistance via bond issues. We examine voter support for the public financing of port infrastructure investments using a 2016 referendum in Rhode Island. Through our multiple regression voting model, we find strong evidence that public spending on ports in Rhode Island was more of a bipartisan issue compared to other public financing efforts on the ballot. Additionally, neighborhoods with a larger minority presence and those with higher median per capita income were more likely to support port development. In contrast, areas with a higher homeowner population and those communities farther from ports were less likely to support port spending. As a key novelty to our paper, we use our voting model results to forecast how a hypothetical port infrastructure bond might fare in other states, and find that regardless of socioeconomic and political differences, all coastal states in the US would be expected to pass a port referendum.

Citation/Publisher Attribution

Jarron VanCeylon, Corey Lang & Austin Becker (2020) Whatever floats your vote: understanding voter support for public port infrastructure investments, Maritime Policy & Management, DOI: 10.1080/03088839.2020.1754478

Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/03088839.2020.1754478

Comment

Jarron VanCeylon and Corey Lang are from the Department of Environmental and Natural Resource Economics.

Austin Becker is from the Department of Marine Affairs.