Data Practices for Studying the Impacts of Environmental Amenities and Hazards with Nationwide Property Data
RFF Penny Liao and coauthors evaluate challenges present in the use of nationwide property data for valuing environmental amenities in this journal article.
Abstract
We discuss data quality and modeling issues inherent in the use of nationwide property data to value environmental amenities. By example of ZTRAX, a U.S.-wide real estate database, we identify challenges and propose guidance for: (1) the identification of arm’s-length sales, (2) the geo-location of parcels and buildings, (3) temporal linkages between transaction, assessor, and parcel data, (4) the identification of property types, such as single-family homes and vacant lands, and (5) dealing with missing or mismeasured data for standard housing attributes. We review current practice and show that how researchers address these issues can meaningfully influence research findings.
Authors
Christoph Nolte
Boston University
Anita Chaudhry
California State University
Christopher Clapp
University of Chicago
Dennis Guignet
Appalachian State University
Hannah Hennighausen
University of Alaska
Ido Kushner
Boston University
Saleh Mamun
University of Minnesota
Adam Pollack
Boston University
Jesse Richardson
West Virginia University
Shelby Sundquist
Boston University
Kristen Swedberg
Virginia Tech
Johannes H. Uhl
University of Colorado, Boulder
