Why do counties adopt transfer of development rights programs?

Abstract

Transfer of development rights (TDR) programs are widely-used market-based tools for growth management efforts that seek to protect farmland, natural areas, and other open spaces threatened by development pressure. Yet, little is known about why local governments adopt, or do not adopt TDR. This study uses descriptive analysis and logistic regression modeling to identify local factors associated with the adoption of TDR by Florida counties from the 1970s to the 2010s. We find that counties that adopt TDR tend to be larger in size, with higher agricultural product sales, and voter-supported land conservation ballot measures. TDR adoption is also associated with home rule authority and a greater percentage of Republican voters, suggesting that market-based mechanisms are linked to both local ability to adopt innovative planning strategies, and to political conservatism. Overall, TDR appears to be a tool that developed counties use to rationalize growth across large areas.

Keywords:

• Transfer of development rights
• policy adoption
• growth management
• sustainability
• market-based mechanisms

Supplemental data

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed here.

Notes

1 We use the term land or farmland ‘preservation’ to refer to the protection of farmland and open space from urban, suburban and exurban development. This usage does not align with the Muir v. Pinchot debate (preservation of land from human use v. conservation of natural resources via responsible management). Instead, it aligns with usage by other authors (e.g., McConnell, Kopits, and Walls 2007) and practitioners (the Lancaster County Agricultural Preserve Board, New Jersey Farmland Preservation Program, Washington Office of Farmland Preservation, Pennsylvania Bureau of Farmland Preservation). In addition, current practice refers to land protection finance ballot measures as land ‘conservation’ ballots (e.g., the Trust for Public Lands ‘conservation-focused ballot measure campaigns’). Here again, we align our usage of the terms ‘conservation ballot’ and ‘conservation finance’ with practice.

2 We tested alternative measures of the political, economic, and spatial role of agriculture in the county, specifically acres in farms, proportion of land in farmland, and the average farm size. These measures were collinear with one another and with the market value of agricultural products sold. Therefore, we elected to include only the value of agricultural products sold.

3 We checked the continuous variables for multicollinearity and identified no cause for removal of any variables beyond that identified in footnote two (various measures of county agriculture). Among the sociodemographic variables, we used population in our model, and among the economic variables, we used market value of agricultural products sold. For the governmental variables of charter county and appointed manager, we used a chi-square test and determined that the variables were too closely related to include both, so we included charter county. Likewise, for the interdependent policies variables of conservation finance ballot measure and UGB adoption, a chi-square test determined a strong relationship, so we used conservation finance ballot measure.