Hedonic Analysis of Auctioned Hunting Leases: A Case Study of Mississippi Sixteenth Section Lands

摘要

This analysis evaluates factors affecting the value of hunting leases on Sixteenth Section Lands in Mississippi using hedonic analysis. These lands are owned by the state and hunting rights are auctioned to the public. Because these market data are generated in a competitive setting, this analysis has certain advantages over previous investigations of hunting lease markets, which relied on surveys of non-industrial private landowners to elicit information about their hunting leases or contingent valuation methods to infer lease values from landowners or hunters. Due to the competitive nature of the issuance of Sixteenth Section leases, their prices better reflect the full impact of lease characteristics such as cover type, game quality, distance to urban areas, and location on hunter valuation of hunting access. Estimates of the implicit prices of these characteristics suggest that land managers should adopt shorter lease lengths, smaller lease sizes, and improve habitat to increase lease revenue.