ABSTRACT
Introduction The economics of rural land-use change encompass numerous tradeoffs involving the allocation of land resources. From an economics perspective, rural land-use change is a bountiful research area because it involves, among other factors, market and nonmarket services, private and public goods, uncertainty, and temporal and spatial dependence. Moreover, the modeling of preferences and production decisions related to land necessitates a diverse range of theoretical and empirical methods. In editing this volume, we hope to inspire an appreciation of this research area and to foster future advancements in the economics of rural land-use change. Divergent private and social interests make the use and management of rural lands compelling public policy and economic issues. In turn, the persistence and the variation of these interests over time and space account for the endurance of public policy issues related to rural land-use change. Conflicts over the use of public and private rural lands are bolstered by diverse values and worldviews over our rural landscape, as well as by government and market failure. Recent examples of such conflicts include the national discussions of oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, the removal of the Hetch-Hetchy Dam, the regulation of snowmobiling at Yellowstone National Park, and the construction and maintenance of roads on national forestlands. Local land-use discussions throughout the U.S. share common threads, as rural communities ponder the advantages and disadvantages of hosting ‘big-box’ retail outlets, gambling casinos, waste disposal facilities, and various forms of new development. Rural land-use change presents complex and challenging issues for economists, planners, and policymakers interested in evaluating outcomes and making suggestions for future land management. Many of these issues follow from the uniqueness of land as both a form of property and a broader natural resource that provides important ecological and social services. Although considerable advancements have been made in modeling the private market returns from lands (and hence the demand for land as a private input by firms and households), there is less of a clear understanding of the demand (and supply) for private non-market services associated with land resources. Moreover, numerous questions remain regarding how to assess the efficiency of aggregate land-use decisions. Said differently, economists have made significant advances modeling individual land-use decisions but struggle when making broad welfare statements
regarding land-use patterns, which are the collective result of many individual decisions. In addition, the local dimensions of land as a policy issue necessitate tailored analytical methods and policy prescriptions. While certain rural communities are presently overwhelmed with intense growth and development pressures, others are threatened by opposite pressures and are experiencing concentrated losses of population and employment opportunities. These distinct settings are likely to raise strikingly different research questions regarding land management and land-use policy. Objectives of this Book Building on the momentum of earlier books on the economics of land use rooted in the traditions of Ricardo and von Thünen (e.g., Barlowe 1958, Found 1971, Van Kooten 1993), the primary objective of this book is to feature contemporary land-use change models and cost-benefit analyses of land-use policies. As noted previously, we perceive land use as an active research area for economists and are excited by recent advances in modeling, such as explicit consideration of the dynamic and irreversible nature and spatial aspects of land-use decisions, as well as recent advances in valuation methods to estimate the demand for non-market services and the external costs and benefits associated with rural land-use change. A second objective of this volume is to make a case for using economic thinking to evaluate, understand, and manage rural land-use change. We believe economists have much to contribute to future discussions of rural land-use change. Moreover, the strength and value of these contributions rest on the continued development of theoretical and empirical frameworks for addressing policy issues related to land use. It is our intention that this volume plays a role in supporting such developments. Direction of Future Research The writings of the various contributors to this volume raise several interesting research questions to guide future research. Part I of this volume evokes several research questions related to land-use trends. Chapters 1 and 2 raise questions related to the underlying determinants of recent increases in developed land uses. Although developed uses are still a small share of the total land base, land was converted to developed uses at the rate of 2.2 million acres per year from 1992 to 1997. Chapter 3 emphasizes the significance of anticipating future conditions, especially accounting for technological advances, when simulating impacts of future proposed policies and highlights the need for future work on measurable indicators of long-term ecological, economic, and social well being as it relates to alternative uses of land. The connections between land-use and transportation outlined in Chapter 4 underscore the importance of future research accounting for the interdependencies between land-use change and the demand for travel. Chapter 5 calls for future research to decipher two forms of rural land-use change: urban
peripheral expansion and green field development in areas far from urban centers. Chapter 5 also emphasizes the joint significance of demographic and regional economic characteristics in determining the type of settlement patterns observed in response to growth pressures. A common theme throughout Part I is the dynamic aspects of land-use trends. Land-use trends are inextricably linked with other social, economic, and ecological trends.
