Valuing Environmental Amenities in Peri-Urban Areas: Evidence from Poland

Abstract

Ecosystems provide services that contribute to the well-being of people living within a city’s borders and on the urban–rural fringe. While benefits from green areas in urban settings are well investigated, peri-urban areas are significantly less addressed by researchers than cities. This study aims to evaluate the importance of environmental amenities in peri-urban areas using the hedonic pricing method to assess people’s willingness to pay for environmental goods and services. A local regression model (geographically weighted regression) and two global regression models (generalized spatial two-stage least squares and ordinary least square) are used to identify the spatial patterns and level of influence of protected areas, forests, rivers, trees, and landscape diversity. This paper includes the Central European case study example of a peri-urban area of the city of Wroclaw, Poland. The results from the three models show that out of all of the environmental amenities included in this study, proximity to protected areas—such as Natura 2000 sites and landscape parks—and the diversity of land-use patches within the 500-m radius around the sites exert the strongest influence on plot prices. The overall impact of environmental amenities on vacant plot prices in peri-urban areas is low or, as in the case of river and streams, not significant. The results of the analysis reveal the preferences of the new peri-urban inhabitants concerning green spaces that have an effect on the real estate market in Poland.

The effects of land price in the peri-urban fringe of Mexico City: Environmental amenities for informal land parcel purchasers

“…Hence, the evidence presented here is important, as it highlights a statistically significant relationship between the price of land and the distance to the nearest forest and PNA. However, although significant, the regression coefficients have values close to zero, which means that buyers are aware of but rather indifferent to environmental features in this informal market, in contrast with formal housing markets elsewhere (Morancho, 2003;Saphores and Li, 2012;Sylla et al, 2019). Even in formal markets in developing countries, environmental quality has a large impact on property prices, as reported by Humavindu and Stage (2003) for Namibia.…”

Public Green Space Policy Implementation: A Case Study of Krakow, Poland

“…The research studies on green spaces in Poland cover quantitative studies in the country and in selected cities [47][48][49] as well as spatial analyses related to the accessibility of green spaces [16,17,30,[50][51][52]. Other presented research studies concern ecosystem services [53], allotment gardens [33,34,54], urban planning [55], the management strategy of the Białowieża Forest [56] and the influence of the vicinity of greenery on housing prices [57,58]. The publication [15] discusses the implementation of urban environmental justice in post-socialist cities (also in Poland).…”

Mismatches in the Ecosystem Services Literature—a Review of Spatial, Temporal, and Functional-Conceptual Mismatches

“…Dawes et al [16] showed that urban areas reforested through a state program in Florida did not necessarily spatially overlap with areas where demand was for tree-related ES. Sylla et al [42] illustrated how to avoid spatial mismatches between the spatial units used in research and the ones municipal policies work in. Both papers indicate a need to coordinate better between policies and other aspects of society such as demand or research.…”