ABSTRACT
While the core premise of environmental valuation – that people weigh quality of life when they choose where to live and evaluate the cost/s they must incur to do so – is intuitive, the underlying behavioral process is much less so. A key step toward better understanding the nature of environmental valuation is to develop a stronger connection between the inter- and intraregional decisions that people make when they choose where and how to live. Environmental quality is thought to be a normal good, so an important empirical question is whether or not increased environmental awareness and the nation's growing wealth will eventually combine to help land markets to internalize some of the costs of sprawl. Likewise for transactions that produce air and water pollution and/or have other deleterious environmental consequences.
