Document Type
Article
Date of Original Version
2024
Department
Environmental and Natural Resource Economics
Abstract
Onshore wind turbine capacity continues to grow and will only accelerate, though siting can be challenging given community opposition. We apply the hedonic valuation method with residential property sales data to assess nearby residents’ willingness to pay to avoid having views of turbines from their property. In doing so, we aim to improve methods of assessing viewshed impacts for turbines and other amenities and disamenities that have a visual component. Our recommended viewshed approach uses a Digital Surface Model (DSM), which accounts for trees and buildings that obstruct views. For comparison, we also create viewsheds based on bare-earth Digital Elevation Model (DEM), which has been more typically used other studies. Using data from New England, USA, we use a difference-in-differences identification strategy with treatment defined by the visibility of a wind turbine, while also controlling for proximity-based treatment effects. The results suggest that property values decline by 2.2%–2.5% when a wind turbine is visible, with larger impacts in urban and coastal areas. DEM methods misclassify viewshed for about 75% of properties, when compared to the DSM-based viewshed, and the resulting DEM-based valuation estimates are attenuated.
Publication Title, e.g., Journal
Journal of Environmental Economics and Management
Volume
128
Citation/Publisher Attribution
Dong, L., Lang, C., & Parent, J. (2024). Focusing the view: Improved methods for assessing viewshed impacts of onshore wind turbines. Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, 128, 103068. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jeem.2024.103068
Available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jeem.2024.103068
Author Manuscript
This is a pre-publication author manuscript of the final, published article.
Terms of Use
This article is made available under the terms and conditions applicable
towards Open Access Policy Articles, as set forth in our Terms of Use.