Conservation and Economic Data for New England Towns 1990-2015

Land protection, whether public or private, is often controversial at the local level because residents worry about lost economic activity. We used panel data and a quasi-experimental impact-evaluation approach to determine how key economic indicators were related to the percentage of land protected. Specifically, we estimated the impacts of public and private land protection based on local area employment and housing permits data from 5 periods spanning 1990-2015 for all major towns and cities in New England. To generate rigorous impact estimates, we modeled economic outcomes as a function of the percentage of land protected in the prior period, conditional on town fixed effects, metro-region trends, and controls for period and neighboring protection. Contrary to narratives that conservation depresses economic growth, land protection was associated with a modest increase in the number of people employed and in the labor force and did not affect new housing permits, population, or median income. Public and private protection led to different patterns of positive employment impacts at distances close to and far from cities, indicating the importance of investing in both types of land protection to increase local opportunities. The greatest magnitude of employment impacts were due to protection in more rural areas, where opportunities for both visitation and amenity-related economic growth may be greatest. Overall, we provide novel evidence that land protection can be compatible with local economic growth and illustrate a method that can be broadly applied to assess the net economic impacts of protection.

无论公共还是私人土地保护，在地方层面往往颇具争议，原因在于当地居民担忧此举会导致经济活动流失。本研究采用面板数据（panel data）与准实验影响评估方法，探究关键经济指标与受保护土地占比之间的关联。具体而言，我们基于新英格兰地区所有主要城镇在1990年至2015年间共5个时段的本地就业与住房许可数据，估算了公共与私人土地保护的影响效应。为获得严谨的影响估算结果，我们将经济产出建模为前期受保护土地占比的函数，并控制了城镇固定效应、大都市区趋势以及时段与邻地保护状况的变量。与“保护举措会抑制经济增长”的主流论调相反，土地保护与就业人数及劳动力规模的小幅增长存在关联，且未对新增住房许可、人口规模或收入中位数产生显著影响。公共与私人土地保护在城市近郊与远郊区域产生了不同模式的正向就业影响，这表明同时投入两类土地保护举措对提升本地发展机遇具有重要意义。就业影响的最大效应来自于较偏远乡村区域的土地保护——这类区域的旅游观光与宜居性相关经济增长机遇往往最为充足。总体而言，本研究提供了新的实证证据，表明土地保护可与本地经济增长兼容，并展示了一种可广泛用于评估保护举措净经济影响的研究方法。