Habitat and Open Space at Risk of Land-Use Conversion: Targeting Strategies for Land Conservation

Funds available to purchase land and easements for conservation purposes are limited. This article provides a targeting strategy for protecting multiple environmental benefits that includes heterogeneity in land costs and probability of land-use conversion, by incorporating spatially explicit land-use change and hedonic price models. This strategy is compared to two alternative strategies that omit either land cost or conversion threat. Based on dynamic programming and Monte Carlo simulations with alternating periods of conservation and development, we demonstrate that the positive correlation between land costs and probability of land-use conversion affects targeting efficiency using parcel data from Sonoma County, California.     

Confronting Price Endogeneity in a Duration Model of Residential Subdivision Development

Spatial equilibrium implies that distant factors are correlated with local prices through market mechanisms. Using this logic, we develop a novel approach for handling price endogeneity in land use models. We combine a control function approach with a duration model to identify the impact of prices in influencing land conversion. We find that failure to control for endogeneity results in large differences in elasticities. Specifically, we find an elasticity of 2.06 compared to 0.67 in a model without instrumentation. This difference is significant as it suggests that price‐based policies, such as ‘green taxes’, are likely more effective in altering development patterns than would be expected from a naïve estimation that ignores price endogeneity. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.