Building on the findings of government research on shale gas communities, we will compare lived experiences and stakeholder engagement in shale gas projects. This work will address the following questions:

1: What are the lived experiences of residents directly affected by shale gas projects and
how do these evolve over time?

2: Does understanding of shale gas, specifically perceived risks and benefits, differ between
case communities, between local and national levels, between collectives of locality and interest, and between individuals with different place attachment?

3: What rationales underpin the engagement strategies and practices used by operators and other stakeholders to engage with shale gas communities?

4: How are the engagement practices of operators and other stakeholders understood and
responded to by shale gas communities, implicating issues of trust and justice?

Geolocation of case communities A GISystem framework will be used to integrate secondary datasets relevant to each case study, including environmental, social, economic and political data. Timeline and matrix tools will be used to describe key events in the narrative of each case and to compare cases against multiple indicators (e.g. deprivation, political support, conservation areas). Planning letters of support and objection and social media communication related to each case will be collated. Geolocation of this data will be used to investigate emergent shale gas communities of locality and interest, how these vary by geographical area and by spatial proximity. Sentiment analysis will investigate how discourse on case-specific risks and benefits have been contested and evolved over time.

Stakeholder engagement Documentary analysis, participant observation and in-depth
interviews will be used to investigate community engagement by stakeholders,
including operators. These will be used to identify the timing, frequency and type of engagement (information provision, communication, participation) activities undertaken in each case, and to elicit narratives of how engagement with and by communities has unfolded over time. Discourse analysis will be used to critically assess the rationales underlying engagement practices (including financial benefit provision); how these are shared across different stakeholders and across cases; and compare with previous research on ‘NIMBY’ siting controversies. Analysis will focus upon what operators understand to be effective community engagement, discourse about geographical difference and spatial proximity, and how communities of locality and interest are represented.

Lived experiences Ethnographic methods will be used to provide a rich description of
residents’ lived experiences of shale gas development and sense of place, through extensive
periods of fieldwork in the case locations. This will involve participant observation of meetings and events, walking interviews and focus groups involving photo-elicitation and participatory mapping with a stratified sample of residents living proximate to each site. Using this data, we will investigate how emplacement of shale gas in familiar localities shapes risk perceptions; whether understandings of shale gas interconnect the locality with regional, national and international energy systems; and how fairly shale gas risks are perceived to be distributed within and outside the locality. Elicited materials will be digitised, geolocated and, with participants’ consent, used in follow-up local impact events and shared via this website.

Local survey analysis Quantitative data on shale gas attitudes and community
responses will be collected from representative samples of residents living in each case study area, and timed to coincide with waves 2 and 3. Some questions will be standardised across national and local scales, with others case-specific, informed by findings from qualitative analyses. Analysis will compare shale gas attitudes and understandings between national and local samples, and between the case studies.