Public Environmental Amenity Benefits of Private Land: The Case of Prime Agricultural Land

Abstract

Failure of land markets to account for environmental amenity benefits may lend support to public policies to protect agricultural land. The contingent valuation method is employed to estimate willingness to pay for such amenities in Greenville County, South Carolina. Marginal household amenity benefits were estimated at $.06 per thousand acres using a payment card in a mail survey with 53 percent response. Bid payment vehicle was found not to significantly influence bids received. The informational structure of the contingent market was found to influence valuation responses, reinforcing the hypothesis that respondents react to alternative contingent market structures. The relationship between contingent market structure and directional effects upon responses is an important area for future research.

Soil “Ecosystem” Services and Natural Capital: Critical Appraisal of Research on Uncertain Ground

“…Of the remaining responses, 25% were zero dollars bids, apparently in disagreement over the request to pay more taxes, even though indirect questioning showed that local residents "were prepared to pay substantial amounts to avoid residential development of agricultural land." Bergstrom et al (1985) proceeded to a mail survey to determine the willingness of inhabitants of a rural county in South Carolina to preserve 25, 50, 75, and 100% of the agricultural land in the county. Drake (1992) carried out a similar study in Sweden, using CVM, and found that WTP was affected by several factors, including income, age, level of education, general attitude toward land preservation, the type of landuse currently on the piece of land being valuated, and regional location.…”

Estimating Residents’ Preferences of the Land Use Program Surrounding Forest Park, Taiwan

“…The CE methodologies are the only methods able to capture both use and non-use values of ecosystem services [39][40][41][42]. Stated preference methods use survey questionnaires to define hypothetical markets and ask individuals to answer questions about their preferences, such as opinions about landscape use planning and nature development.…”

Ecosystem service trade-offs and synergies misunderstood without landscape history

“…Although preferences for land cover varies with different user groups (Gómez-Limón and de Lucío Fernández 1999), natural land cover is often preferred to urban cover and agricultural land (Ulrich 1986). Traditional agriculture lands are also aesthetically pleasing (Bergstrom et al 1985, Brady 2006. Thus from an aesthetics perspective, we assumed forest cover was considered the best for paddling, followed by agricultural and urban land cover.…”