Nonmarket valuation of inner-city ecological values

摘要

Market-driven conservation of inner city green space improving people's quality of life also implicitly protects biological reserves. By using the hedonic pricing model as a revealed preference approach, people's willingness to pay for environmental attributes such as (natural) parks, plant species diversity and inner-city open space in general, is estimated for the city of Vienna (Austria). Thereby, hedonic price functions of citizens characterized by different incomes and preferences, respectively, are derived from housing prices. Consistent with previous literature findings, the estimated model suggests that people with different utility functions also attribute different values to environmental characteristics. In addition to the monetary valuation of nonmarket goods and services, conclusions about the relation between existence values and monetarily quantifiably environmental values (by the method of revealed preferences), entering in the inhabitant's utility functions, are drawn.