Understanding “public” framings of private places and psychological ownership in a rural land use conflict

Abstract

The resource-based region of northern Ontario, Canada is a historically contested terrain containing Indigenous, privately owned, and publicly-owned “Crown” lands. Batchawana Island, formerly the largest privately-owned island in Lake Superior, has remained largely undeveloped. In 2017, the island's legal owner held a public meeting in Batchawana Bay to consult locals on his plans to build a 5-Star exclusive sporting and hunting club on the island. These plans were later cancelled in part due to public opposition of the project. We apply the concepts of psychological ownership and place attachment to analyze the discourse that occurred at this public event to understand perceptions of land use and ownership by residents and other actors who frequent the surrounding area. We find that psychological ownership is helpful in understanding residents' reactions to the proposed development plans, even when these plans were for someone else's private land. Both psychological ownership and place attachment offer unique insights into this land use conflict.