Abstract
Following Rosen's model, hedonic land price functions are estimated for Chiba City using mesh data with special reference to the values of farm land and green space as environmental attributes in the residential area. The extent of "farm land" and "green space" in the sample meshes, together with the intensity of "buildings" and "transport infrastructure," are provided as variables to represent the qualitative attributes of residential environments. Two alternative specifications of the hedonic land price function are provided, the "separate model" in which farm land and green space are treated as different variables and the "combined model" in which the two variables are combined into one variable. Several alternative functional forms are tried in the estimation of the hedonic land price function, including quadratic, quadratic semi-log, and Box-Cox transformation.
The separate model reveals that, whereas green space is an amenity, farm land is a dis-amenity for urban residents. The hypothesis that the two variables have the same environmental attributes is rejected based on the estimation results of the two models. The present finding that farm land is a dis-amenity is consistent with some earlier hedonic studies that used micro-level data of large cities in Japan, but contradicts the results of studies in which such highly aggregated observational units as prefectures or cities were adopted for their hedonic analysis. This gap between micro and macro studies may be filled if the neighborhood nature of the effects of environmental factors, which have so far been largely neglected in research on the non-farm utilities of farm land in Japan, is given due attention using an appropriate observational unit.
