Building Resentment: Indigenous Resentment and Opposition Towards Housing

Do non-financial motives drive opposition of new housing? Community furor over the Sen̓áḵw project in Vancouver, British Columbia highlights the potential importance of intergroup attitudes, like Indigenous resentment, in explaining opposition to new housing. Using a pre-registered survey and conjoint experiment conducted on 2,000 adult Canadians, including an oversample of respondents in communities with large population of Indigenous residents, we show that Indigenous resentment is associated with opposition to housing development and beliefs that such development will harm neighbourhood character, worsen crime, and strain social services. Contrary to expectations, we do not find these associations to be stronger in communities with large populations of Indigenous peoples. Indigenous resentment also moderates the effect of certain characteristics of the development. Projects with Indigenous developers and those that are meant to house Indigenous people spark considerable opposition among the resentful and generate beliefs the housing development will lead to undesirable social consequences. Together, our results highlight the importance of intergroup attitudes in shaping housing attitudes.