Abstract
The ubiquitous use of ballot referendums in the public finance of land conservation means that conservation policy is often made at the individual voter level. However, studies to date have relied on either aggregate vote outcomes or surveys of residents of small geographic areas facing high growth. In this article, we utilize an original national survey to investigate a series of questions that pertain to individual opinion on open space preservation with a special focus on respondents’ perception of open space in their community. We find that most demographic variables that are determinants of open space and land use preferences in studies that use aggregate data and cover a limited geographic range are not statistically significant in our models. We also find that perceptions about the amount of open space available in ones’ community, not objective open space measurements, are a statistically significant and robust determinant of open space bond support. Our results indicate that policy advocates may be able to increase the probability of support for public financing of open space preservation by focusing on people’s perceptions of the scarcity and disappearance of open space.
Highlights
Land conservation is a popular tool to preserve natural resources and curb growing development in the United States
We find that perception of community open space is a statistically significant and robust correlate of open space bond support: respondents that perceive a small [large] amount of open space in their community are more [less] likely to support an open space bond, regardless of the actual amount of open space there is in their community
We have demonstrated the importance of eliciting individual perceptions, opinions, and activities when analyzing preferences for open space bond referenda
Summary
By the end of 2015, state, local, and national land trusts had conserved 56 million total acres of land and managed $2.18 billion in endowments and dedicated funding (Land Trust Alliance 2015) This type of policy activity suggests widespread support for government policies that devote resources to land conservation, but the literature to date is limited regarding what influences individual preferences for these types of policies. The ubiquitous use of ballot referenda in the public finance of land conservation means that conservation policy is often made at the individual voter level and a better understanding of the individual determinants of vote support would be valuable to policy-makers and advocates To this end, here we utilize an original national survey to investigate a series of questions that pertain to individual opinion on open space preservation with a special focus on respondents’ perception of open space in their community. Building off the literature to date, we ask: How well do actual open space amounts align with people’s perception of their community’s available open space? What role does perception of open space play in preferences for publicly funded environmental projects? And which is more strongly correlated with respondent’s support for open space preservation: objective or subjective assessments of land use change?
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