• People in cities are more sceptical of pylons than those living in rural areas.
• People who regularly listen to radio station NRK P2 are sceptical, but those who watch football on TV have little against power pylons in nature.
• People who own holiday homes of more than 150 square metres are markedly more critical than those owning regular-size holiday homes (about 70 square metres).

City against country
Half of those asked agreed fully or partly with the statement "Power pylons in Hardanger destroy a Norwegian natural icon". 30 per cent disagreed completely or partly with this statement, and about 20 per cent neither agreed nor disagreed. Opposition against the construction of overhead lines in Hardanger is strongest among people in south-eastern Norway with high income and education. Average Norwegians in the countryside are more understanding of the need for power development.

These are the results of a nation-wide survey conducted by TNS Gallup. The survey analyses supporters and opponents of the power cable construction in Hardanger using Sosioraster – a method which sorts people by social affiliation, cultural capital and wealth.
 

Social divide
The major divide goes along job and cultural affiliations. The survey confirms the so-called centre-periphery dimension of the issue. Opposition against building an overhead line in Hardanger is strongest among people in south-eastern Norway with high income and education.
“The survey shows that people who use nature for recreation are the most opposed. This demographic consists of business executives and academics, doctors, lawyers and public sector managers. ”Ordinary people” are far less opposed,” says human geographer Karl-Fredrik Tangen who headed the survey.

This group contains industry workers, farmers and regular public sector workers. ”They resemble the group described by political theorist Stein Rokkan as “countrysiders” when he described the centre-periphery divide in Norwegian politics. They are the silent majority who represent opinions which find little acceptance among the opinion-leaders in the public discourse,” says Tangen.

He believes the survey shows that the major divide in what people think about building power pylons is decided by what job you have and what cultural affiliation you have.
”People who do not feel the fluctuations in the economy themselves are most eager to avoid interventions in nature,” says Tangen.

Background for the survey
Statnett wants to learn from the process in Hardanger and commissioned this survey as a supplement to media analyses to learn more about the attitudes to development projects in various parts of the population. “We originally intended to use this survey only internally, but the findings were so marked that we thought they may be of interest to others as well,” says Statnett vice president, communications Tor Inge Akselsen.

Statnett has previously accepted that the information about the development process in Hardanger has not been good enough. “Our job is to supply good enough information to carry out proper democratic processes in connection with our development projects. This requires more knowledge about what different parts of the population think about pylons in nature. This survey has been very educational for us in this regard,” says Akselsen. 

About the survey
The polling in this survey was conducted by TNS Gallup in cooperation with analysis firm Sosioraster. The polling included a selection consisting of 1004 respondents in Norway in September. The respondents were representative, i.e. matching the Norwegian population as regards gender, age and geographical location. The selection was made on the basis of TNS Gallup’s internet panel, «gallupPanelet». This panel contains 4000 people about whom Gallup has extra background information. Human geographer Karl-Fredrik Tangen, associate professor at Oslo School of Management, was in charge of the survey.
 

About sosioraster
Sosioraster is a segmenting model based on cultural and economic resources. The model provides the opportunity to find, explain and compare similarities and differences in lifestyle. The model sorts the respondents by economic resources (income and assets), education (level and type) and upbringing (parents’ education and financial circumstances). On this basis, a social room is constructed where the volume of resources (length of education, economy) increases the higher up in the room you get.