44 research outputs found
High Economic Values from High Peaks of the West
Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,
Internalizing Externalities when there are Significant Private Non-Market Rents
Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,
January 2008 Economic development report, no. 3
January 2008.Includes bibliographical references
Determinants of Agricultural Landowners’ Willingness to Supply Open Space Through Conservation Easements
Open space provides a range of benefits to many people of a community, beyond the benefits that accrue to private landowners. Parks and natural areas can be used for recreation; wetlands and forests supply storm-water drainage and wildlife habitat; farms and forests provide aesthetic benefits to surrounding residents. Moreover, undeveloped land can give relief from congestion. Agricultural lands are an important source of open space, but many of these lands are under great development pressure. One tool that is currently being used to aid in the preservation of open space by landowners is conservation easements. The rate of land protection by state and local land trusts has tripled since the beginning of the decade, and the West is the fastest growing region for both the number of acres under conservation easements and number of land trusts according to the Land Trust Alliance. Given the increased demand for amenities provided by private agricultural lands and the increased use of conservation easements, it is interesting to note that there is a paucity of research related to landowners’ preferences regarding conservation easements. The specific research objective of this paper is to determine important factors affecting an agricultural landowners’ potential choice regarding the placement of a parcel of land under a conservation easement. Knowing these factors could be useful to communities, public organizations and land trusts trying to provide open space to meet a growing demand for this public good. Information to construct a survey was obtained through a series of focus groups held in Wyoming and Colorado. Results from these focus groups were then used to develop twelve versions of a stated choice survey instrument. The first part of the survey included questions about the landowner’s specific community. These Likert scale questions were to designed to elicit a measurement of the respondents’ “sense of place” regarding his or her community. The second part of the survey questioned participants about their land and their land’s attributes, including what the landowner felt his land was worth, types of production and non-production activities land was used for, the types of developmental pressures being felt by the landowner, and the kinds of amenities he would like to conserve on his property. The third section of the survey included questions about the landowner’s personal knowledge of easements and two stated choice questions regarding conservation easements. These stated choice questions focused on five attributes: contract length, managerial control, wildlife habitat, access and payment. The final section of the survey asked respondents about demographic characteristics. Data were analyzed as a multinomial logit random utility model in LIMDEP. Respondents preferred an easement that was in perpetuity over an easement that was term in length. Respondents were less likely to accept an easement if public access on their property was required. As payment proportion in relation to the respondents’ perception of the value of their land went up, so did the likelihood that they would accept the easement. Landowners in Colorado were more likely to accept an easement than landowners in Wyoming. This is somewhat expected as developmental pressures in Colorado are higher than Wyoming, and thus far more easements have been transacted in Colorado than in Wyoming. Years on the land and connection to community were significant in explaining the acceptance of an easement scenario. The more connected one was to their community, the more likely they were to accept an easement. The longer a respondent had lived on their land, the more likely they were to accept an easement as well. The level of education a respondent had achieved negatively impacted easement acceptance. If an easement was already in place on a respondents’ property, the likelihood of accepting an easement scenario increased significantly.Land Economics/Use,
The Right of Nonuse
82 p.Humankind is on a path of inefficient and unsustainable resource
use and exploitation. As a result, the earth and its resources are now
facing irreversible disruptions that have the potential to affect
multiple generations. These disastrous global effects are not only
caused by excessive resource use. Rather, accelerated human use of
resources also has the devastating consequence of impairing the
purely ecocentric benefits that follow when humans do not use
resources. When resources are left alone by humans, when they are
not exploited or developed, their nonuse is beneficial for the entire
biosphere, of which humans are only a part.
In this Article, we show how the destruction of this critical nonuse
component of natural resources is creating many of the alarming
environmental changes that are so disturbing to the planet. Then,
through a series of analytical arguments founded in economic game
theory, we illustrate that sustainable resource use can only be
achieved if legal rights are bestowed upon not just human resource
users, or humans who benefit themselves from resource nonuse, but
also upon the resource itself. We define this legal right as the
resource’s “right of nonuse.” Establishing a “right of nonuse”
effectively privatizes a resource, facilitating a cooperative game that
is between three kinds of players: human resource users, humans who
selfishly prefer resource nonuse, and the resource itself. An analysis
under this three-player game, which at last includes the natural
resource itself as a critical actor, provides a framework for moving
toward an efficient, sustainable path of resource conservation