News Release

People want green space, but not at the expense of their own green

Peer-Reviewed Publication

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, News Bureau

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. -- When asked if they would support the idea of developing more green space in their communities for recreational or aesthetic purposes, people typically embrace the idea. That's because it's a warm-fuzzy concept "right up there with Mom and apple pie," according to Gerrit Knaap, a professor of urban and regional planning at the University of Illinois.

But when these same people are asked to dig into their own pockets to support such development, the response is often much cooler.

That's what Knaap and colleague Greg Lindsey, a professor at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, found after analyzing the results of a study designed to determine people's willingness to pay for projects in a publicly designated greenway in Indianapolis. The researchers also sought to test the validity of a research method known as Contingent Valuation -- a somewhat controversial approach used to estimate the value of an intangible commodity.

"In CV surveys, citizens are asked to reveal how much they would be willing to pay for a particular public good or service," Knaap and Lindsey wrote in an award-winning report on their research, published in a recent issue of the Journal of the American Planning Association. During the past decade, they noted, "CV has been used frequently to estimate the value of water and air quality, fishing and hunting opportunities, wildlife preservation, and a variety of other public and environmental goods," and to evaluate the benefits of environmental regulations.

In their study, Knaap and Lindsey conducted a 33-question CV survey that polled more than 2,700 households regarding use and management of land adjacent to Crooked Creek. Respondents -- who included property owners along the Crooked Creek Greenway, renters who lived along the Greenway and county residents -- also were asked about their willingness to contribute to the White River Greenways Foundation. Half of the households received surveys with questions about willingness to pay for Crooked Creek projects; the other half received surveys that also included actual solicitations for donations.

Knaap said the proportion of respondents willing to pay was much higher in response to the survey alone than to the survey that included a solicitation. Among property owners, the difference was 51 percent vs. 36 percent. And in the end, only 10 property owners actually mailed checks.

"For contingent valuation research, the results provide a number of insights that planners can use to apply the technique or interpret results," Knaap and Lindsey noted in their report. "First, the results confirm that CV survey responses provide credible information about the relative strength and covariates of support for public goods. Across all groups, willingness to pay for greenways was positive, but quite limited. ... Second, although the results are indicative of relative support, they provide further evidence of significant differences between amounts people say they are willing to pay and the amounts they actually will pay."

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