Resource information
Ascribing land value solely to productive capacity does not accurately capture the impact environmental amenities provide on western land prices. Agricultural land prices in Wyoming are estimated using a hedonic price model and Geographic Information Sciences (GIS) data. These GIS measurements include on-parcel wildlife and fish habitat, viewscape attributes and distance to protected federal lands. A feasible generalized least squares (FGLS) approach is used to address both spatial autocorrelation and heteroscedasticity. The estimation is robust and highly significant. Results indicate that amenities as well as productivity are significant in explaining land values for the sample analyzed. Such information is useful for landscape management in the face of amenity threatening parcel fragmentation.
