Values of environmental landscape amenities during the 2000-2006 real estate boom and subsequent 2008 recession

This research suggests that consumers' marginal willingness to pay for environmental landscape attributes, such as water view, developed open space and forest-land open space, decreased during the 2008 recession compared to the 2000-2006 real estate boom. Estimates were obtained from a spatial hedonic housing price model after controlling for household location patterns and structural differences between the periods. Because the decline in amenity values was probably due to a temporary deterioration in economic conditions, the amenity values will probably rebound with economic recovery. Thus, development decisions based on the lower estimated amenity values measured during a temporary deterioration in economic conditions may be determined suboptimal post-economic recovery.