Environmental Studies Program
Date of this Version
Spring 5-2012
Abstract
This research was conducted in various towns of eastern and central Nebraska using a survey which asked respondents about how valuable the resources and ecological benefits are that were to be involved in the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline. Surveys were administered in public locations using a combination of convenience and snowball sampling. A total of 38 respondents from the eastern region and 40 from the central region were surveyed. The research seeks to investigate if there is correlation between certain demographic categories and high value placed on the environmental facets in question. Do males or females place higher value on these resources? Do respondents who live nearer to the resources in question (those from the central region) place a higher or lower value on them? Is there a particular resource that ranks highest in value to Nebraskans? And finally, does the value place upon the ecological benefit rank higher for the respondents personally, or for their understanding of the needs of the state as a whole? Statistical analysis was conducted regarding variation between gender and region of the interviewees and no significant difference in their means was found. A more simplistic analysis of the mean valuation levels for each resource was conducted and found that respondents from Eastern Nebraska place higher value on average on every resource except agriculture.