Measuring the NIMBY effect in urban China: the case of waste transfer stations in metropolis Shanghai

Abstract

China is experiencing fast urbanization and its urban citizens’ growing concern for urban disamenity has imposed a serious challenge for the urban management. This paper assesses the impact of a typical environmental facility, namely waste transfer stations, on housing values in Shanghai, China. Through hedonic pricing models, we detect an inverted-U pattern of housing prices around the waste transfer stations in Shanghai, and the maximum influence distance is nearly 3 km. We also analyze how the disamenity impacts of waste transfer stations vary across locations and differ with their own characteristics. The possibility of neighborhood sorting is discussed, but we find it would not be a problem in this paper. In the conclusion section, we discuss the policy implications of our findings.