The Effects of Government-Announced Soil Liquefaction Potential on Housing Prices in Reported Areas: A Two-Stage Spatial Quantile Regression Analysis

Abstract

This study examines the effects of a government announcement of soil liquefaction potential on housing prices in the reported areas, and explores the rate at which these prices changed after the announcement. This investigation utilizes published real estate price registration data from Taipei City, Taiwan covering the period January 1, 2015 to December 31, 2017, and resolves the issue of data heterogeneity by applying nearest-neighbor matching (an aspect of propensity score matching), and employ the difference-in-difference method in conjunction with two-stage spatial quantile regression. The empirical results indicate that although low, moderate, and high housing prices in potential soil liquefaction areas were all negatively affected by the announcement initially, after a period of one and a half years, the negative effect decreased for low housing prices and was no longer significant for moderate and high housing prices.