The individual determinants of support for open space bond referendums

Abstract

The ubiquitous use of ballot referendums in the public finance of land conservation means that conservation policy is often made at the individual voter level. However, studies to date have relied on either aggregate vote outcomes or surveys of residents of small geographic areas facing high growth. In this article, we utilize an original national survey to investigate a series of questions that pertain to individual opinion on open space preservation with a special focus on respondents' perception of open space in their community. We find that most demographic variables that are determinants of open space and land use preferences in studies that use aggregate data and cover a limited geographic range are not statistically significant in our models. We also find that perceptions about the amount of open space available in ones' community, not objective open space measurements, are a statistically significant and robust determinant of open space bond support. Our results indicate that policy advocates may be able to increase the probability of support for public financing of open space preservation by focusing on people's perceptions of the scarcity and disappearance of open space.

Smart Growth at the Ballot Box: Understanding Voting on Affordable Housing and Land Management Referendums

“…However, our findings can be compared somewhat to several articles that investigate voter support for growth control policies. Recent evidence by Prendergast, Pearson-Merkowitz, and Lang (2019) found that demographic variables that are determinants of open-space and land-use preferences in aggregate studies were not all statistically significant in a national public opinion survey of open-space preferences. They found that while racial identification and homeownership were related to increased support for open space, income and education were not.…”

“…Instead, studies that exist are largely based on aggregate data from elections and case studies of local land-use decisions. In addition, the literature to date has failed to take into account whether or not the views attributed to individuals are a product of the ecological inference fallacy—where the actions that appear when using aggregate variables are not reliable for individuals (e.g., King, Tanner, and Rosen 2004; also see Prendergast, Pearson-Merkowitz, and Lang, 2019, specifically about ecological fallacy issues on views of land preservation).…”

“…If policies have a spatial element (e.g., housing is built in one area, a farm is preserved in another), the costs of these policies fall on people differently depending on where they live. Research suggests that open-space preservation is generally most popular in areas in which there are or once were significant land-based natural resources (farms, forests, wetlands) and where there has been a high degree of development threatening those resources (e.g., Kotchen and Powers 2006) and, importantly, is highly associated with perceptions of land use but not with objective measures of land use (Prendergast, Pearson-Merkowitz, and Lang, 2019). Thus, voters likely vote for/against these initiatives in response to where they think the land will be preserved and where the housing will be built (also see Mohamed 2008).…”

Variation in Valuation: Open Space and Geography

“…This result is consistent with Bento et al (2015) that find housing values are more responsive of amenity changes than rental rates. Despite typically strong results between partisanship and willingness to vote for land conservation (Altonji, Lang, and Puggioni 2016;Prendergast Pearson-Merkowitz, and Lang 2019), no such relationship exists between % Democrat and MWTP.…”

The effect of flood experience on public preferences for land preservation: evidence from referendum votes

“…Deacon and Shapiro (1975) first lays out a theoretical foundation to allow individual demand for land preservation to be inferred from aggregate voting data. To better understand voter support for land preservation, subsequent studies have used this approach to investigate which factors contribute to the success of open space referenda (Kline 2006, Kotchen and Powers 2006, Nelson et al 2007, Banzhaf et al 2010, Prendergast et al 2019. One limitation of these empirical studies is that they focus only on the effects of observable socioeconomic variables, neglecting the effects of exogenous shocks like disaster events.…”