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Is What You See What You Get? The Value of Natural Landscape Views

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  • Margaret Walls
  • Carolyn Kousky
  • Ziyan Chu

Abstract

Views of natural areas and green space may have value quite apart from access to those lands. Using 25 years of home sales data from St. Louis County, Missouri, and modern geographic information system tools to measure views, we estimate a hedonic property fixed-effects model that captures the effects of changing land cover on house sale prices. Unlike previous studies, our approach minimizes bias from omitted variables and uniquely captures changes over time. We find that forest views negatively affect home prices, whereas farmland views have positive effects. Changes in relative scarcity of these land types over time may explain the findings.

Suggested Citation

  • Margaret Walls & Carolyn Kousky & Ziyan Chu, 2015. "Is What You See What You Get? The Value of Natural Landscape Views," Land Economics, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 91(1), pages 1-19.
    • Handle: RePEc:uwp:landec:v:91:y:2015:i:1:p:1-19
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    5. Hyejin Lee & Byoungkil Lee & Sangkyeong Lee, 2020. "The Unequal Impact of Natural Landscape Views on Housing Prices: Applying Visual Perception Model and Quantile Regression to Apartments in Seoul," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(19), pages 1-19, October.
    6. Kota Mameno & Takahiro Kubo, 2022. "Socio-economic drivers of irrigated paddy land abandonment and agro-ecosystem degradation: Evidence from Japanese agricultural census data," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 17(4), pages 1-15, April.
    7. Schaak, Henning & Mußhoff, Oliver, 2021. "Public Preferences for Pasture Landscapes and the Role of Scale Heterogeneity," German Journal of Agricultural Economics, Humboldt-Universitaet zu Berlin, Department for Agricultural Economics, vol. 70(03), January.
    8. Meri Davlasheridze & Qin Fan, 2019. "Valuing Seawall Protection in the Wake of Hurricane Ike," Economics of Disasters and Climate Change, Springer, vol. 3(3), pages 257-279, October.
    9. Shawn J. McCoy & Randall P. Walsh, 2014. "W.U.I. on Fire: Risk, Salience & Housing Demand," NBER Working Papers 20644, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    10. Reeves, Tyler & Mei, Bin & Siry, Jacek & Bettinger, Pete & Ferreira, Susana, 2020. "Effect of working forest conservation easements on surrounding property values," Forest Policy and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 118(C).
    11. Jay Mittal, 2017. "Valuing Visual Accessibility of Scenic Landscapes in a Single Family Housing Market: A Spatial Hedonic Approach," ERES eres2017_1, European Real Estate Society (ERES).
    12. Kovacs, Kent & West, Grant & Nowak, David J. & Haight, Robert G., 2022. "Tree cover and property values in the United States: A national meta-analysis," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 197(C).
    13. Jay Mittal & Sweta Byahut, 2019. "Scenic landscapes, visual accessibility and premium values in a single family housing market: A spatial hedonic approach," Environment and Planning B, , vol. 46(1), pages 66-83, January.
    14. Loomis, John & Richardson, Leslie & Dara, Putri Komala & Mueller, Julie & Zabel, Jeffrey & Smalley, Paige & Fitch, Ryan & Nolte, Christoph & Paterson, Robert, 2024. "Ecosystem service values provided by National Parks to residential property owners," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 220(C).
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    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • Q51 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Valuation of Environmental Effects
    • R14 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - General Regional Economics - - - Land Use Patterns

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