SWEDISH AND LITHUANIAN TRANSPORT INFRASTRUCTURE, FINANCED BY THE EUROPEAN UNION A quantitative analysis of urban and rural citizens’ attitudes towards the EU’s role in developing physical infrastructure

Sammanfattning

The existing literature explains that urban and rural citizens tend to have contrasting views onthe EU, with the latter being less trusting of the EU due, inter alia to experiencing economicexclusion from the EU’s Cohesion Policy. This paper analyses whether urban and rural citizensin Sweden and Lithuania differ in their views on whether it is more or less important for the EUto invest in local physical infrastructure. The results from the binary logistical regression showthat Swedish urban and rural citizens differ on whether it is important for the EU to invest inlocal physical infrastructure, as Swedish rural citizens are less likely to believe it is lessimportant for the EU to invest in local physical infrastructure than Swedish urban citizens, whileLithuanian urban and rural citizens do not differ in that question. This thesis also discusses howfuture research should look into which factors can play a bigger role in shaping attitudestowards the EU as an actor of developing local physical infrastructure, and whether theconcentration of EU funds can affect the urban-rural gap in the question of whether it isimportant for the EU to invest in local physical infrastructure.