Are households’ residential preferences consistent with biodiversity conservation in different urban contexts?

Abstract

This article combines stated preference methods and graph-based landscape approaches to assess the possible synergy existing between households’ residential preferences and biodiversity conservation in urban areas. We start by estimating household’s residential preferences regarding different landscape attributes (i.e. green spaces and compactness of the neighbourhood) of chosen urban contexts applying the choice experiment method. Then, by integrating ecological indicators obtained by using a graph-based approach in our valuation model, we study the impact of the residential choice on biodiversity conservation. Our results suggest that the preferred neighbourhood also have landscape structure that are in favour of biodiversity conservation. The preference heterogeneity for green spaces and compactness will induce landscape-based sorting. Household’s residential location choices affect biodiversity conservation differently which depend on their socio-demographic characteristics.

Keywords:

• Green preferences
• urban biodiversity
• choice experiment
• landscape graph analysis
• residential choice

JEL Classification:

• Q57
• Q51

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 Indeed, the area covered by vegetation appears to be a good predictor of species numbers (McKinney, 2008), and in this respect green spaces, defined as "any vegetated areas found in the urban environment, including parks, forests, open spaces, lawns, residential gardens, or street trees" (Rall et al., 2015), have notably appeared to be important to maintain connectivity in urban landscapes (Tzoulas et al., 2007).

2 Refer to Bartkowski et al. (2015) or Nunes and Van den Bergh (2001) on the difficulties of stated preferences studies for biodiversity valuation.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by French ministry of ecological transition and Seventh Framework Programme (grant 235175 TRUSTEE (ANR-13-0001-01)).

Notes on contributors

Camille Regnier

Camille Regnier is an economist at the University Paris-Est Créteil since 2019 and is specialized in urban and environmental economics.

Gengyang Tu

Gengyang Tu is an economist at the International Business School Suzhou, Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University and is specialized in choice experiments methods.

Sophie Legras

Sophie Legras is an economist at INRAE and is specialized in spatial and environmental economics.

Mohamed Hilal

Mohamed Hilal is a geographer at INRAE and specialized in urban landscape analysis.

Cécile Détang-Dessendre

Cécile Détang-Dessendre is a senior economist at INRAE and is specilized in spatial and agricultural economics.