Rural towns in Nebraska have a problem. They're shrinking.
Researchers at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln have been working on a study to help these rural communities. The first in a series of studies was conducted in the panhandle region of Nebraska in order to begin finding out how communities can become more successful at recruiting new residents.
The study was funded by the United States Department of Agriculture National Research Initiative.
Goal: Economic development
The initial idea for the study was to find ways to assist communities with issues they have with young people moving away to urban areas. The study then expanded to look into how to attract new community members. The researchers had one main goal in mind, though: to help communities grow economically.
"The ability to attract new residents would move us toward that goal, which is economic development," said Randy Cantrell, the principal investigator for the project.
The researchers began this study in September 2006 and used interviews, questionnaires and focus groups to gather data about why individuals move from one location--either a rural area or an urban area--to a new one, Cantrell said.
What prospective residents look for
The researchers analyzed the data they gathered and found that the reasons why people move to rural areas are highly affected by where a person is moving from.
People moving from urban areas want to move somewhere that can make their lives better through qualities such as the town's safety, good school systems, a sense of community in the town and opportunities to enjoy the outdoors, Cantrell said.
In contrast, people moving from rural areas don't place as much value on the quality of life characteristics in the new town because they've always had those amenities, Cantrell said.
"For people who make an urban to rural move, the job and income considerations are relatively less important than quality of life considerations," Cantrell said. "I'm talking about things like safety, outdoor recreational opportunities. Things that are more qualitative in nature."
But for people moving from a rural area to another rural area, jobs and money were the biggest considerations because those things are most likely to make the biggest improvements in their lives, he said.
Marketing small communities
Because of the differences between rural and urban prospective residents, members of small communities can market and advertise their town to potential residents by emphasizing the qualities most important to prospective newcomers, according to where they are moving from.
This creates a segmented market, said Bruce Johnson, a researcher for the project. This segmentation occurs because the marketing approaches for the two distinct groups are so different, Johnson said.
Because of this knowledge, Cantrell said, small towns need to ask themselves what they can do to make community information accessible to people who want to move to or work in that rural area. This means not only making statistics about the community available on Web sites but also encouraging people to visit the community to see the town for themselves.
For example, during the focus group interviews, the researchers wanted to find out how a community could demonstrate its safeness to prospective residents, Cantrell said. Prospective residents didn't think police reports or crime statistics would fully convey the level of safety in a community. Instead, they said they could know the safeness of the town just by visiting and observing it.
"In focus groups," Cantrell said, "people repeatedly said to us, 'I knew this was a safe environment because I saw children engaged in unsupervised play. I saw unlocked bicycles in the park. These are things you could not do in my Denver neighborhood, my Houston neighborhood.'"
After many months of research, the researchers for this project have begun wrapping up the project by submitting for peer review a draft article about their findings, entitled "Moving to the Rural Great Plains: Point of Origin Differences in the Decision Making Process." The researchers hope the article will be published in a journal, Johnson said. The end date for this study is June 2008.
Continuing research
The researchers have applied for a grant to extend the study and expect to find out if they will receive the funds sometime in June, Johnson said.
Now that the researchers know what information needs to be made available to the segmented market of prospective residents, the next step is to find a way to successfully market these communities, Johnson said. With the information from these studies, rural areas may be able to make a step in the right direction.
Not only do the UNL researchers want to help bring new people into small communities, but they want to help the towns keep the new people there to nurture the economic development.
Because bringing new residents to communities won't make a difference unless the communities can keep the new residents, "retention is key," Johnson said.
