Nonmarket Valuation and Land Use: Two Essays

The research presented here consists of two essays that describe applications of nonmarket valuation techniques to current land use issues. The individual studies were designed to address important methodological and policy issues, respectively. In the first essay, Geographic Infornlation System (GIs) data are used to develop variables representing the physical extent and visibility of surrounding land use/cover features in a hedonic model of a nuaVsuburban housing market. Three equations are estimated to determine if views affect property prices, and, h-ther, if omission of visibility variables leads to omitted variable bias. Results indicate that the visibility measures are important determinants of prices and that their exclusion may lead to incorrect conclusions regarding the significance and signs of other environmental variables. The second essay represents a synthesis of fmdings from focus groups conducted in five states. The focus groups were the first step in a study designed to identify the types of attributes of farmland and agricultural systems that are important to the public and should be preserved as open space. Modeling of responses to a variety of choice exercises provides several insights. Overall, the results suggest that open space protection through preservation of agricultural lands is an important issue to the public. Preferences for farmland preservation vary depending on the region of the country and the attributes of the land. The physical location of the farm, the type of farm and the farming practices used are important to people, all of which are directly and indirectly influenced by state and federal agricultural policies. INTRODUCTION The research presented here consists of two essays that describe applications of nonmarket valuation techniques to current land use issues. The individual studies were designed to address important methodological and policy issues, respectively. The first essay describes the use of spatial data to construct variables in a hedonic property value model of a ruraVsuburban residential market. This study combines property sales and Geographic Information System (GIs) data to estimate implicit prices for proximity, extent and visibility of several land use and land cover features. This is one of the first studies to develop a continuous measure of visibility and the first to incorporate proximity, physical area and visibility of environmental attributes in a hedonic model. The second essay provides information on public preferences for attributes of farmland and agricultural systems in the context of a national policy to protect open lands. This research utilizes data from conjoint …