Boon or Bane: Effect of Adjacent YIMBY or NIMBY Facilities on the Benefit Evaluation of Open Spaces or Cropland

Abstract

This is the first study to comprehensively evaluate the benefit of urban open spaces and cropland with different adjacent public facilities seen as locally undesirable (“not in my backyard”, NIMBY) or desirable (“yes in my backyard”, YIMBY). The total benefit increases or decreases for urban open space and cropland with adjacent NIMBY or YIMBY facilities in a municipality in Taiwan. The results show that for the city as a whole, the current arrangement of NIMBY and YIMBY in different zones decreases the total benefit of urban open spaces in highly urbanized zones and increases the total damage to cropland in extremely rural zones. This indicates a need to avoid further installing NIMBY or YIMBY facilities in already occupied urban open spaces. The results also demonstrate that locating NIMBY or YIMBY facilities near cropland fails to highlight the benefit of YIMBY facilities and magnifies opposition to NIMBY facilities. For individual housing units, the total damage is 1.87% of the average housing price for cropland-type open space with adjacent NIMBY or YIMBY facilities, and the total benefit is 7.43% of the average housing price for urban-type open space in a highly urbanized area. In contrast, the total benefit for open space with adjacent NIMBY or YIMBY facilities is a 2.95–13.80% increase in the average housing price for areas with mixed urban open space and cropland.