Survey Says NIMBYism Decreased During the Pandemic

Tech company coUrbanize, which has products to enable broader feedback in community engagement projects, ran a survey suggesting that NIMBY, or not in my back yard, attitudes decreased during the pandemic.

However, the methodology of the survey undercuts its potential reliability in accurately gauging sentiment.

According to the firm, “62% of respondents surveyed—all visitors to dedicated coUrbanize websites for real estate projects—described themselves as pro-development, compared to 49% of respondents in 2020.”

“Projects most popular among respondents centered on housing,” a release said. “A majority welcomed affordable housing for senior citizens (76%); workforce housing for teachers, firefighters, and public servants (69%); affordable housing for people with disabilities (66%); single-family housing for middle-class families (64%); and affordable housing for veterans (63%).”

It also added, “Respondents were somewhat less enthusiastic about retail projects (57%) and low-income housing (50%). The least welcomed projects were lab facilities (20%) and public housing (31%).”

The approach coUrbanize used, surveying visitors to the firm’s own dedicated websites for real estate projects, has a significant flaw in its methodology. Such a self-selecting approach to sampling, where people essentially invite themselves to participate, is typically seen as not statistically meaningful. A survey’s accuracy in gathering public sentiment depends on reaching as random a selection out of a population as possible. Self-selection based on an interest, like the status of a specific real estate project, can create a biased sample more inclined toward certain answers, under portraying other views.

However, this particular survey and the company behind it raise questions about whether attempts to understand community sentiments about development have had their own biases in the past.

“We started by solving one of the biggest challenges that real estate and planning teams face today, community engagement,” the company says on its website. “coUrbanize gives people a way to share their feedback without going to a public meeting and in their native language—by posting a comment online, texting their feedback, or leaving comments via voicemail.”

Those who attend public meetings are also self-selected samples. Press reports about the willingness, or lack thereof, to accept addition development in a given city may primarily represent a particular view, like NIMBY, that might not be an accurate portrayal of a broader community.

Also, a far greater percentage of people welcomed development compared to when coUrbanize ran a survey on the topic about two years ago. As the survey and its methodology are apparently no longer available online, it’s not possible to know whether it was done in the same way.

But, in business, often perfect information in unobtainable and it’s necessary to base decisions in part on information you may not be able to completely trust, but when something more accurate or descriptive could be too expensive or impractical to pursue.