Landscape amenities and local development: A review of migration, regional economic and hedonic pricing studies

Abstract

With rapid urban expansion and loss of open space, attractive local landscapes will continue to gain importance in location decisions and on political agendas. The present study reviews the evidence on the local economic role of landscape amenities from two major strands of empirical research, migration and regional economic models, and hedonic pricing models. Following common amenity definitions we identify 71 relevant peer-reviewed studies and systematically assess the reported effects of the landscape amenity variables. The migration and regional economic studies suggest that migrants are attracted by amenities nearly as often as by low taxes. Reported effects of amenities on income and employment are less consistent. The hedonic studies suggest that nature reserves and land cover diversity have mostly, open space and forest often, and agricultural land rarely positive effects on housing prices. Studies at larger geographic scales and studies involving urban areas were more likely to identify significant amenity effects. Some limitations of the evidence may be overcome with better datasets and modeling approaches. However, in line with other recent work, the limitations also highlight the need for complementary information from the analysis of political preferences for land-use management. to gain importance in location decisions and on political agendas. The present study reviews the evidence on the local economic role of landscape amenities from two major strands of empirical research, migration and regional economic models, and hedonic pricing models.Following common amenity definitions we identify 71 relevant peer-reviewed studies and systematically assess the reported effects of the landscape amenity variables. The migration and regional economic studies suggest that migrants are attracted by amenities nearly as often as by low taxes. Reported effects of amenities on income and employment are less consistent. The hedonic studies suggest that nature reserves and land-cover diversity have mostly, open space and forest often, and agricultural land rarely positive effects on housing prices. Studies at larger geographic scales and studies containing urban or suburban areas were more likely to identify significant amenity effects. Some limitations of the evidence may be overcome with better datasets and modeling approaches. However, in line with other recent work, the limitations also highlight the need for complementary information from the analysis of political preferences for land use management.

Valuing Urban Landscape Using Subjective Well-Being Data: Empirical Evidence from Dalian, China

“…Many other researchers adopted the same method in estimating house prices attributed to the various landscape types, such as a park, lake, wetland, forest, ocean, mountain, river, etc. [19,47]. Without exception, all landscapes with enriched natural resources and beautiful environment attributes can considerably contribute to the nearby residential property values [48][49][50].…”

“…For example, the hedonic pricing method is generally deemed as a reliable non-market valuation method because it is based on real estate market data. Nevertheless, it relies on a strong assumption of both housing and labor markets to be in an equilibrium condition to correctly elicit the values of an environmental attribute [19]. Unfortunately, these assumptive conditions are rarely satisfied in practice due to market rigidity, policy constraints, exorbitant moving costs, etc.…”

Influencia de la migración en los precios de la vivienda en los municipios de Cundinamarca (Colombia)

“…Con el objeto de incluir amenidades locales relacionadas con el mercado de vivienda, se incluye como variable independiente a la proporción del suelo municipal que es rural, ya que puede mostrar la capacidad municipal de extender su centro urbano y, al mismo tiempo, la presión sobre los recursos naturales y bienes ambientales existentes en el suelo rural (Chen et al, 2009;Waltert & Schläpfer, 2010). Por su parte, variables como la tasa de lesiones personales por cada cien mil habitantes y una dummy de piso térmico frío son incluidas para controlar condiciones institucionales y geográficas de cada municipio.…”

“…Siguiendo a Greenwood (1985) y Waltert (2010), los factores que inciden en el movimiento de población se pueden clasificar en: i. Condiciones del individuo y su familia: niveles de destreza, edad, educación, estado civil, número de hijos, etc. ; ii.…”

Assessing visual green effects of individual urban trees using airborne Lidar data

“…In addition, urban trees provide people with aesthetic benefits which are closely related to stress relief (Ulrich et al, 1991), mental and physical benefits (Ode and Fry, 2002;Bhatti and Church, 2003) and attraction to migrants (Waltert and Schlapfer, 2010). As a result, growing research emphasis is put on understanding the patterns and functions of urban trees.…”