Concerns of Newcomer and Longtime Residents in Nonmetropolitan Idaho Communities: Does the "Gangplank" Theory Apply to Older Populations?

The purpose of this study was to examine the level of concern indicated by older people regarding issues of growth and change, based on whether they were newcomers to their community or longtime residents. Participants consisted of 443 residents over the age of 50 who lived in one of three high resource-amenity, nonmetropolitan Idaho communities. These are communities developed around natural or manufactured environmental or geographic amenities, such as water, mountains, or forests. A mail survey was used to test the gangplank theory, which posits that newcomers see change as negatively affecting the environment that initially attracted them to the community. They move into an area of their choice and then pull up the gangplank in order to restrict community change. Rather than failure to support growth, as one would expect from the gangplank theory, instead newcomers were concerned about community leadership, and were significantly more concerned than longtime residents about how growth was being handled. Interestingly, newcomers were significantly less satisfied with restaurant choices than longtime residents were, while longtime residents were significantly less satisfied with housing costs than newcomers were.