Authorship,Collaboration, Topics,and Research Gaps in Environmental and Resource Economics 1991–2015

Environmental and Resource Economics is one of the premier journals in the field of environmental economics. It was established with an aspiration to focus more on applied and policy relevant research compared to other established journals, and to establish better channels of communication and collaboration between researchers from Europe and other parts of the world. We present a text based exploratory analysis of 1630 articles published in the Journal from 1991 to 2015 that suggests the Journal has been somewhat successful in meeting both these aims. Perhaps more importantly, it shows the Journal continues to progress toward these goals. The European authors are the largest contributors to the Journal, which is in contrast to other prominent journals (such as Journal of Environmental Economics and Management and Ecological Economics). And while most of the collaboration has occurred within this geographic region (e.g., European authors collaborated with other European authors more frequently), this trend appears to be changing as the proportion of articles written by international collaborators is gradually increasing. Topic analysis reveals that almost all of the articles could be grouped under applied and/or policy relevant topics, and almost two-thirds of the articles are empirical in nature, which suggest that the journal has been able to fulfil both of its commitments. We also investigate trends in research foci over the last 25 years and what kind of research gaps can be discerned.     

Capitalized amenity value of urban wetlands: a hedonic property price approach to urban wetlands in Perth,Western Australia*

Up to 60 per cent of potable water supplied to Perth, Western Australia, is extracted from the groundwater system that lies below the northern part of the metropolitan area. Many of the urban wetlands are groundwater‐dependent and excessive groundwater extraction and climate change have resulted in a decline in water levels in the wetlands. In order to inform decisions on conserving existing urban wetlands, it is beneficial to be able to estimate the economic value of the urban wetlands. Applying the Hedonic Property Price approach to value urban wetlands, we found that distance to the nearest wetland and the number of wetlands within 1.5 km of a property significantly influence house sales price. For a property that is 943 m away from the nearest wetland, which is the average distance to the wetland in this study, reducing the wetland distance by 1 m will increase the property price by AU$42.40. Similarly, the existence of an additional wetland within 1.5 km of the property will increase the sales price by AU$6976. For a randomly selected wetland, assuming a 20 ha isolated circular wetland surrounded by uniform density housing, the total sales premium to surrounding properties was estimated to be around AU$140 million (AU$40 million and AU$230 million).     

Valuing ecosystem services of urban forests and open spaces: application of the SEEA framework in Australia*

Around two‐thirds of the global population will live in cities by 2050 requiring large urban infrastructure development. Decision‐makers and planners usually rely on standard economic accounting methods for urban planning and investments on infrastructure assets. However, standard methods fail to account for the ecosystem services benefits that living infrastructure (e.g. urban forests, open spaces) provides to city dwellers. This could generate socially inefficient configurations of urban spaces and compromise the achievement of long‐term urban sustainability targets. In this analysis, we applied a stochastic whole‐of‐life benefit–cost analysis following the System of Environmental‐Economic Accounting (SEEA) framework to compare alternative long‐term management strategies for living infrastructure in Canberra, Australia. Spatially explicit data, i‐Tree Eco and benefit transfer methods were used to estimate the stocks and flows ecosystem services benefits of urban forests and irrigated open spaces from 2018 to 2070. Our analysis suggests that a ’30 per cent canopy cover expansion’ scenario has the highest benefit–cost ratio, while the business as usual scenario, where a net loss of 400 trees is expected per year, offers the lowest benefit–cost ratio. Scenarios of expanding versus not expanding irrigated open spaces in the future both result in a benefit–cost ratio of approximately two.     

The welfare costs of urban outdoor water restrictions

Outdoor water restrictions are usually implemented as bans on a particular type of watering technology (sprinklers), which allow households to substitute for labour-intensive (hand-held) watering. This paper presents a household production model approach to analysing the impact of sprinkler restrictions on consumer welfare and their efficacy as a demand management tool. Central to our empirical analysis is an experimentally derived production function which describes the relationship between irrigation and lawn quality. We demonstrate that for a typical consumer complete sprinkler bans may be little more effective than milder restrictions policies, but are substantially more costly to the household.