SGER: The Impact of the September 11, 2001, Terrorist Attacks on American Metropolitan Household Decisions to Stay in the Same Residence, to Remodel, or to Move

Ohio State University Research Foundation -Do Not Use, Columbus OH

Investigators

Abstract

Under normal conditions, American metropolitan areas are subject to constant change. These changes are the product of a complex set of cause-effect interactions among different systems, with each contributing factors acting to differing degrees in different settings. All of these factors have contributed to the expansion of areal metropolitan areas. Among the dynamic processes occurring in metropolitan areas are the myriad decisions of households regarding whether to stay in their current residence or to move. One conceptualization of this kind of household decision posits that a threshold exists beyond which households find the strains of remaining in their current housing unit to be too great, thereby leading them to decide to move to a different unit. Changes in lifestyles and in the perceived characteristics of neighborhoods also have been found to affect household mobility decisions significantly. One of the strongest influences on mobility is the perceived safety of a neighborhood. Extant notions regarding safety and security received a profound shock on September 11, 2001, however, when terrorists destroyed the World Trade Center in New York City and attacked the Pentagon near Washington DC. These events directly affected thousands of people, but millions watched in horror as events unfolded again and again. Follow-up reports on television, on radio, in newspapers, and via other media kept the events constantly in mind. Almost no one in the U.S. remained untouched. This Small Grant for Exploratory Research will support a post-September 11 study of household attitudes to determine the degree to which householder perceptions of the safety and security may have altered their locational decision making. The project will consist of a new survey of nearly 2,000 households in the Columbus, Ohio, metropolitan area. The survey will build on a mail survey of a random sample of Franklin County homeowners conducted during the Summer of 2001. That survey asked questions about housing and neighborhood satisfaction and desires, mobility and remodeling plans, and household demographic characteristics. The responses from the survey were combined with county auditor records, so that the resulting data set contained physical information about the housing unit as well as the survey answers from the nearly 50 percent of the randomly drawn sample that responded. The original research plan called for using these data to study the influence of household and neighborhood-level characteristics on normal urban processes of growth and change. This Small Grant for Exploratory Research support a follow-up inquiry that will proposal requests funds to add eight to ten questions to the original survey and immediately send it to a new random sample of Franklin County homeowner. Research on residential mobility responses to hazards has shown that the standard demographic predictors of mobility have it stronger influence on movement patterns than perceptions or attitudes about the hazard. The events of September 11 were unique in the nation's history, however. Nearly all U.S. households experienced the events through the media and may now view their own cities as hazards -- as places where terrorists may attack. This project will examine what effect these events have had on households' attitudes towards their home, neighborhood, and likelihood of moving by collecting additional survey data on homeowners' attitudes and comparing these responses to data gathered via the same survey of homeowners just prior to September 11th. This pre- and post-event information provides a unique opportunity to examine the impact that this kind of event may have on the decisions that households make about their housing and will shed light on whether such events could shape the spatial structure of American cities and regions in the future.