Estimation of house price differential of urban tree cover: an application of sample selection approach

Hedonic valuation of urban forest amenities tends to assume that these attributes are exogenous to sample selection, which might render the estimated results misleading. This article intends to estimate the house price differential of urban tree cover by considering the sample selection issue. The main hypothesis is that houses with high tree cover generates higher utility to consumers, and thus leads to higher house price, ceteris paribus. It may attribute to the fact that consumers self-select into purchasing houses with high- or low-density tree cover based on some unobserved systematically different characteristics. As a result, estimates from sample selection models confirm the hypothesis that purchasing a house with high-density tree cover leads to a positive price differential compared with the low-density tree cover in Napa, Los Angeles, and that buying a low-density tree cover house results in negative price differential in Napa, Los Angeles.     

Environmental amenities and agricultural land values: a hedonic model using geographic information systems data

Remote agricultural lands, which include wildlife habitat, angling opportunities and scenic vistas, command higher prices per hectare in Wyoming than those whose landscape is dominated by agricultural production. Geographic information systems (GIS) data are used to measure recreational and scenic amenities associated with rural land. A hedonic price model is specified with GIS measures. It is used to estimate the impact of amenity and agricultural production land characteristics on price per acre for a sample of Wyoming agricultural parcels. Results indicate that the specification performed well across several functional forms. The sampled land prices are explained by the level of both environmental amenities as well as production attributes. Statistically significant amenity variables included scenic view, elk habitat, sport fishery productivity and distance to town. This analysis permits a better estimation of environmental amenity values from hedonic techniques. Improved estimation of amenity values is vital for policies aimed at open space preservation, using agricultural conservation easements and land use conflict resolution.     

Economic Analysis for the UK National Ecosystem Assessment: Synthesis and Scenario Valuation of Changes in Ecosystem Services

We combine natural science modelling and valuation techniques to present economic analyses of a variety of land use change scenarios generated for the UK National Ecosystem Assessment. Specifically, the agricultural, greenhouse gas, recreational and urban greenspace impacts of the envisioned land use changes are valued. Particular attention is given to the incorporation of spatial variation in the natural environment and to addressing issues such as biodiversity impacts where reliable values are not available. Results show that the incorporation of ecosystem services and their values within analyses can substantially change decisions.     

An Application of the Hedonic Price Model to the Perth Residential Land Market*

This paper presents the results of an application of the Rosen-Freeman hedonic price model to the Perth (Western Australia) residential land market. A sample of over two thousand market transactions is used to estimate the value of residential land attributes. Major emphasis is given to those particular land attributes that are subject to public regulation and to the policy implications that follow.     

公众参与土地利用规划的初步探索--以浙江省嘉善县为例

公众参与是土地利用规划的重要环节,但在我国还处于探索阶段。文章以中加合作试点单位浙江省嘉善县为例,以城乡居民生活质量的改善作为规划的切入点,采用“头脑风暴法”,分七个步骤讨论了公众参与土地利用规划的过程和方法。最终公众采用“100美元”意向投资的方法,确定嘉善县的五项规划主题:良好的区位条件、丰富的历史文化资源、水和空气受污染、建设用地利用效率低、农地保护政策缺乏弹性,并有针对地提出相应的行动计划。     

Endogenous Land use and the Ricardian Valuation of Climate Change

The Ricardian technique uses cross-sectional variation in the capitalized value of climate in land to infer the agricultural costs or benefits of dynamic climate change. While a practical approach for predicting the consequences of global warming with readily available data, it may yield biased results when land-use decisions depend on the climate attributes being valued and when land has unobserved attributes that differ with the use to which it is put. This paper illustrates the conditions under which such a bias will occur, describes an empirical model that corrects for it, and estimates that model with agricultural census data from Brazil. The approach, moreover, allows constraints on adjustment to be explicitly incorporated into the Ricardian framework, relaxing one of that technique’s most conspicuous assumptions. I would like to thank Patrick Bayer, Steven Berry, Robert Evenson, Michael Hanemann, Robert Mendelsohn, Bill Nordhaus, Kerry Smith, Karl Storchmann, two anonymous referees, and seminar participants at the University of California – Santa Barbara and the Research Triangle Institute for their useful insights and helpful comments. All remaining errors and omissions are my own. Fabiana Tito provided excellent research assistance, and Denisard Alves and Robert Evenson generously supplied the data.     

Reconsidering Heterogeneity and Aggregation Issues in Environmental Valuation: A Multi-attribute Approach

The economic valuation of complex environmental goods (composed of multiple attributes) is an expanding field of research in ecological and environmental economics. However, several issues are still subjects of debate. This paper focuses on three of them: the linearity of the valuation function in the attributes; aggregation criteria for obtaining social values; and the heterogeneity of individuals’ utility functions. A methodological approach based on Multi-attribute Utility Theory, which enables us to contrast the impact of these concerns on the valuation of environmental goods, is proposed. We employ the methodology to value a protected natural area and, from the results obtained, we can conclude that the non-linearity and the heterogeneity of the individual utility function are relevant aspects of environmental valuation that need to be taken into account when valuing environmental goods.     

耕地资源非市场价值及其评估方法分析

非市场价值是耕地资源无法忽略的重要组成部分,耕地资源过多向非农用途转变的根本原因在于人们对耕地资源的价值认识不足.文章在评析耕地资源价值理论的基础上,系统地分析了耕地资源的非市场价值及其构成,并讨论了耕地资源非市场价值的各种评估方法及其局限性,以促进我国耕地资源非市场价值评估理论和方法的进一步完善.     

Socioeconomic adjustments and choice experiment benefit function transfer: Evaluating the common wisdom

It is often argued that attribute adjustments made possible within choice experiments have the potential to improve benefit transfer accuracy. These transfers, however, often omit socioeconomic adjustments; this reflects a limited presence of socioeconomic covariates in broader choice experiments. The lack of correspondence between common guidance that socioeconomic adjustments should be applied and simultaneous arguments for the advantages of choice experiment transfers leads to ambiguity for transfer practice. This paper contrasts the change in transfer performance resulting from an ability to adjust for policy attributes with that resulting from an ability to adjust for socioeconomic attributes. Results are illustrated for the case of agricultural land preservation. The goal is to provide evidence regarding the tradeoff faced by practitioners who seek to use choice experiments for benefit transfer but lack the ability to adjust for socioeconomic attributes.     

Deliberative valuation without prices: A multiattribute prioritization for watershed ecosystem management

Watershed ecosystems are characterized by multiple attributes which are difficult to collapse into single money-metric. Attribute ranking without prices and group deliberation can be used to process information about these complex systems. We develop this approach and use it with a stakeholder group to classify attributes in subwatersheds for restoration. We examine the relationship between individual valuation and valuation arrived from deliberation and information exchange by the group. While group consensus values tended toward an average of individual responses, significant differences existed between mean values and consensus values for some attributes, emphasizing the role of ecosystem attribute information and deliberation.     

Using Choice Experiments to Value the Environment

This paper we outline the “choice experiment” approach to environmental valuation. This approach has its roots in Lancaster's characteristics theory of value, in random utility theory and in experimental design. We show how marginal values for the attributes of environmental assets, such as forests and rivers, can be estimated from pair-wise choices, as well as the value of the environmental asset as a whole. These choice pairs are designed so as to allow efficient statistical estimation of the underlying utility function, and to minimise required sample size. Choice experiments have important advantages over other environmental valuation methods, such as contingent valuation and travel cost-type models, although many design issues remain unresolved. Applications to environmental issues have so far been relatively limited. We illustrate the use of choice experiments with reference to a recent UK study on public preferences for alternative forest landscapes. This study allows us to perform a convergent validity test on the choice experiment estimates of willingness to pay.     

Does attribute order influence attribute-information processing in discrete choice experiments?

The existing empirical evidence shows that both contingent valuation and discrete choice experiment (DCE) methods are susceptible to various ordering effects. However, very few studies have analysed attribute-ordering effects in DCEs, and no study has investigated their potential influence on information-processing strategies, such as attribute non-attendance (ANA). This paper tests for attribute-ordering effects and examines whether the order of attributes describing the alternatives affects respondents’ propensity to attend to or ignore an attribute. A split-sample approach is used, where one sample received a DCE version in which the positions of the first and last non-monetary attributes are switched across the sequence of choice tasks compared with the other sample. The results show that attribute order does not affect welfare estimates in a significant way under the standard assumption of full attribute attendance, thus rejecting the notion of procedural bias. However, the welfare estimates for the attributes whose order was reversed and the share of respondents who ignored them differ significantly between the two attribute-ordering treatments once ANA behaviour is accounted for in the estimated choice models. These results highlight the important role of information-processing strategies in the design and evaluation of DCEs.     

Integrating public demands into model-based design for multifunctional agriculture: An application to intensive Dutch dairy landscapes

The contribution of agriculture to the welfare of society is determined by its economic, social and environmental performance. Although theoretical discussions can be found in the literature, few reports exist that integrate the social demand for multifunctional agriculture in the evaluation of the sustainability and the global welfare of society. This paper presents a methodology that combines economic valuation, integrated modelling, stakeholder analysis, and multi-criteria evaluation. It consists of three steps to determine: (1) social demands for multifunctional agriculture; (2) feasible technical alternatives available from the supply part of the market; (3) the net utility of alternatives for society measured as the change in social net benefit, i.e. the sum of changes compared to the current situation expressed in utility of market and non-market net benefits. Market net benefits are represented by their monetary value. Quality Function Deployment combined with Analytic Network Process (QFD/ANP) were used to estimate the non-market net benefits. The methodology is applied to the case study of a dairy-farming based agricultural landscape in the Northern Friesian Woodlands, The Netherlands. Social net benefit depended on land use, i.e. pasture management regimes on each of the agricultural fields and on presence or absence of hedgerows around the fields. Changes in market net utility were expressed in terms of changes for farmers, consumers and government. Changes in non-market net utility were expressed in terms of changes in landscape quality, nature value and environmental health for Dutch society as a whole, as estimated from European public surveys (Eurobarometer). The complete solution space defined by the market and non-market net benefits of landscapes with alternative patterns of land use was estimated to offer insight in the trade-off between market and non-market performance and enable selection of ‘icon’ landscapes to target or avoid. Improvement of the current landscape towards the social optimum would involve changes in pasture management resulting in higher gross margin for farmers, slightly relaxing current environmental restrictions, which could be reached at lower levels of subsidies in agri-environmental programs. In addition to such overall optimum the results demonstrate the trade-off between market and non-market benefits and the characteristics of current, utopian and dystopian landscapes. The approach provides an alternative to current economic valuation methods which focus on assessment of economic value as an input to analysis. Here, economic value emerges as the trade-off between market and non-market functions which is an output of the analysis.     

The Effect of Protest Votes on the Estimates of WTP for Use Values of Recreational Sites

Contingent valuation studies are often characterized by a considerable number of protest responses, which may cause selectivity bias on the final estimates for WTP. Sample selection models can detect and – if necessary – correct selectivity bias. In economic applications where the relevant dependent variable is continuous, sample selection models are generally estimated using Heckman's 2-step method rather than the FIML estimator. Either method has its own drawback: computational complexity for the FIML method, susceptibility to collinearity problems for the 2-step method. Using data on valuation of forest resources for recreational use, we analyse the performance of the two estimators. In this application, given the presence of some collinearity, the FIML is preferred to the 2-step method. A procedure is outlined to deal with selectivity problems in similar settings.     

Land tenure and investment incentives: Evidence from West Africa

The existing literature on the relationship between property rights in land and agricultural investment in Africa has given results that are often confusing and contradictory. I make two clarifying contributions to this literature. First, I pull together existing studies and investigate whether the results they find have been affected by research methods or local contexts. Studies with small sample sizes, those that use binary investment measures, and those that control for household fixed effects are less likely to find a statistically significant link between land tenure and investment. Self-reported tenure security has been a poor predictor of investment outcomes. Second, I test for a relationship between land tenure and agricultural investment in nine data sets from West Africa. While the link between tenure and investment is significant for fallow and tree planting, it is less robust for labor use and other inputs, such as manure or chemical fertilizer.     

论重点农业产业化龙头企业对陕西县域经济发展的促进

陕西省的重点农业产业化龙头企业主要分布在县域,而且主要是乡镇企业或民营科技企业。这些企业在县域主导农业产业的优化选择和持续稳定发展、农地规模化经营和农业科学技术的有效推广,以及县域农业的外向型经济发展方面发挥关键促进作用。为了更好发挥促进作用,政府还必须进一步完善重点农业产业化龙头企业的分级评价筛选、动态监测和立法管理制度。     

An Analysis of the Performance of Commercially Oriented Farms in Hungary

As a result of the economic restructuring and political reforms undertaken during the 1990s, Hungary has a varied set of farm types that encompass a wide array of different sizes, degrees of capital intensity and forms of ownership. This article explores the performance of Hungarian farms and concludes that, in contrast to other Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries, the majority of commercially oriented farms are profitable. However, estimates are sensitive to the valuation of own land and labour inputs. From the application of factor and cluster analysis, eight clusters of farms are profiled and the most competitive group identified. While the most profitable cluster also has the highest mean farm size, farm consolidation should not be treated as a panacea for dealing with low agricultural returns in the region.     

公司型风险投资增加了新创企业的价值吗*

本文以我国中小板2007-2014年间有风险投资机构参与的上市公司为样本,分析了公司型风险投资机构对新创企业价值增值的影响。研究发现,与独立风险投资（IVC）相比,公司型风险投资参与的上市公司在IPO时获得的估值较低,并且在上市短期（1年）内的经营绩效较差。而当公司型风险投资中的母公司与新创企业之间存在战略协同时,会对公司的价值增值产生显著的正效应,且这种正效应并不完全来自于CVC卓越的项目挑选能力。根据实证研究结论,本文提出了一些建议,希望能促进我国公司型风险投资更好地发展。     

Is the value of an environmental public good sensitive to the providing institution?

In this paper we examine whether stated preferences and Willingness To Pay estimates, obtained in a choice experiment, are sensitive to the institutional context in which the good under evaluation is provided. Specifically, we examine the effects on valuation from employing two different institutions, an authority under the supervision of the National government and an authority under the supervision of an international body, the European Commission, as responsible for the design and implementation of a forest restoration project following a split sample approach. We find that coefficients of the utility model and Willingness To Pay estimates for all attributes are not statistically different between the two treatments. This is so despite the significant differences in the trust levels reported for the two institutions. We speculate that our results reflect the significance of the environmental good to the citizens given its local nature and the sheer size of the fire disaster.     

A study of virtual land trade between China and ASEAN based on material flow analysis model

In this paper,based on the material flux analysis model（MFA） and its corresponding theories and algorithms of ＂virtual land＂ virtual land contents of five primary agricultural products are calculated and＂Virtual land trade＂hidden in those imported and exported products are also obtained through analyzing the primary agricultural product trade between China and ASEAN. In the process of calculationl following the thought of Changing agricultural products to ＂Virtual land trade＂land content, trade condition and spatiai distribution of agricultural products Were integratedly considered. indicate that China exported 73;057 km^2 of virtual land area to ASEAN by tea, vegetables; maize and grain, ASEAN exported： 57.332 km^2 to China by natural rubber from 2002 to 2005. It obvious; that china has lost 15,725 km^2 arable land through agricultural product trade, Additionally, in order to process： of calculation Virtual land trade, Thailand taker as an example to analyze its international trade of rice and Wheat from 1991 to 2005 and Calculate their ＂Virtual land trade＂ 2001 through 2005. According to and calculation, it is not difficult to conclude that ＂Virtual land trade＂ very important and could be used for China to guide agricultural export or import Structure and maintain Sustainable use of land resources.