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

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Date

Jan. 31, 2015

Authors

Margaret A. Walls, Carolyn Kousky, and Ziyan Chu

Publication

Journal Article

Reading time

1 minute

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. (JEL Q51, R14)

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Authors

Margaret A. Walls

Senior Fellow

Margaret Walls is a senior fellow at RFF. Her current research focuses on issues related to resilience and adaptation to extreme events, ecosystem services, and conservation, parks and public lands.

Dr. Carolyn Kousky

Nonresident Fellow

Dr. Carolyn Kousky is a nonresident fellow at RFF and Associate Vice President for Economics and Policy at Environmental Defense Fund.

Ziyan (Jessica) Chu

Research Associate

Ziyan (Jessica) Chu

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