Polarization in public support for hydraulic fracturing: A latent class analysis

Public support for hydraulic fracturing (HF) is polarized, yet aggregate surveys often obscure the conditional nature of HF’s social license. This paper analyzes vignette experimental data ( n = 1311 ) to empirically identify the structural conditions of public support for HF in Western Canada. Using an adjacent-category ordinal logit latent class (LC) model, we identified four distinct classes of support (and opposition) that align with a traffic-light governance taxonomy: supporters ( green ), pragmatists ( yellow ), conditional opponents ( orange ), and entrenched opponents ( red ). Our findings show that these classes withhold active support at “Mercalli 2″ (persistent seismicity… but too small to cause damage) and withdraw support completely at “Mercalli 3” (infrequent seismicity…but potential damage), indicating that social license expires before standard regulatory frameworks trigger interventions. Furthermore, we find that support (and opposition) is structurally conditioned by extractive embeddedness and demands for collective distributive justice—evidenced by a strict preference for community projects over cash grants. We argue that these structural patterns of contestation persist regardless of temporal market shifts. Policy implications emphasize the need to establish social traffic-light protocols for HF-induced seismicity and institutionalized benefit-sharing mechanisms to address the inequities of the split estate.