Progress 02/15/15 to 02/14/18
Outputs
Target Audience:Given its high relevance for watershed policy, its data-driven, empirical nature, and its objectives to improve existing statistical estimation methods, this project was aimed at a mixed target audience of watershed managers and policy makers, field practitioners, peer academicians, and graduate and undergraduate students. All target audiences were reached via the numerous outreach and presentation efforts spawned by this funded effort. The details for these activities are given in the dissemination section above, and the list of project products. Changes/Problems:
Nothing Reported
What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?The project employed one FTE of a post-graduation undergraduate student who was primarily responsible for enhancing the restoration projects database, and for compiling the home sales data. The student also collected and prepared all source files and posted them online for public access. During the project the student interacted with numerous agencies and academic peers, thus laying the foundation for a professional network that will undoubtedly become very useful in her emerging career. She also acquired advanced GIS and web publishing skills. In terms of communicating results to the public, she gave a poster presentation at local conference, as well as a conference presentation at the final project workshop. She also participated in three peer-reviewed papers as co-author. The project also sponsored one FTE of a graduate student, who participated in the preparation of the home sales data, augmenting the sales data with census and other ancillary information, and the development of econometric estimation methods. This created opportunities for that student to learn new GIS and programming tools, and become familiar with extracting information from census files. He also learned about modern computational simulation methods, and state-of-the-art matching estimators. In terms of outreach, the student presented his work at the prestigious Camp Resources conference, where he had the chance to meet graduate students and faculty from leading environmental economic outfits. He also gave a paper presentation at the project's final stakeholder workshop and had the opportunity to discuss the economic aspects of watershed improvements with fellow students, practitioners, agencies, and academicians from local universities. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?We presented our updated GIS map of watershed interventions, as well asfindings from our housing market analysis at eight national and/or international conferences, two invited departmental seminars, and three water-related workshops and symposia to mixed audiences of academic peers, students, practitioners, watershed managers, and local stakeholders. In addition, we organized a stakeholder workshop, funded under this grant, to disseminate and discuss our finding. The workshop, titled "25 Years of Johnson Creek Watershed Restoration: A Synthesis of Scientific an Economic Impacts," was hosted at Reed College, Portland, OR, on March 17, 2017, and brought together local watershed authorities, practitioners, project leaders, as well as peer academicians and students (graduate and undergraduate). Our project team presented four papers related to this grant effort at this workshop. We also published one paper flowing from this project in a peer-reviewed field journal, and submitted two additional manuscripts to peer-reviewed outlets. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?
Nothing Reported
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
We took two separate analytical approaches to estimate the impact of the watershed improvement projects in the Johnson Creek basin on home values: repeated sales models and matching models. Repeated sales models utilize the fact that many homes in our data sold twice or more often during our research period. This allows for the estimation of project impacts if they are bracketed by two sales of the same home, while automatically controlling for time-invariant unobservable housing or neighborhood characteristics. The drawback of this approach is that it does not utilize the many single sale observations in our data. Matching techniques are designed to handle all sales, single or repeated, to tease out the impact of project interventions by comparing "treated homes" (in the proximity of an intervention) to "control homes" (further away, but otherwise identical or similar to the treated home). However, since no matched pair of homes is ever truly identical, matching requires more elaborate adjustment techniques than repeat-sales to account for remaining differences in observable home characteristics, other than location relative to a watershed project. Specifically, we use a repeat-sales model to investigate if restoration projects have an effect on the sale price of nearby single-family residential properties, and if estimated effects vary by project phase, distance, and type. We find that properties in closest proximity to stormwater, floodplain, and revegetation projects experience a positive price effect during different project phases. In contrast, the effect for projects with the primary goal to enhance wetlands are mixed over projects, project phases, and distance perimeters. This is the first research effort in this literature that looks at both the spatial and temporal dimensions of watershed interventions with respect to their effect on housing markets. This work is forthcoming in the peer-reviewed journal "Land Economics." In a related research effort we take a closer look at how these housing market impacts segregate over specific project attributes, such as if restoration occurred in-stream or streamside, if the project site was purchased or remained in private hands, or if there is public access. We use again a repeat-sales model to estimate the effect of nine such project attributes for all 209 restoration projects. Estimated effects are found to vary by attribute, distance, and project phase. Specifically, in-stream restoration efforts are positive while restoration that occurs streamside has mostly negative effects. Nearby property owners experience positive effects if land is purchased for the project, and if recreation facilities are available on site, but negative effects if restoration involves heavy machinery. Furthermore, the effects of some project attributes are capitalized into home values even before restoration work begins. This work is currently under review at a peer-reviewed journal. In a third paper based on the repeat-sales approach and using the home sales data compiled under this sponsored effort, we estimate the effect of being located in a designated floodplain location on single-family residential sale prices. The most common approach used in the existing literature uses parcel data to determine if a property is in a floodplain. However, flood insurance is only required if a homeowner has a federally-backed mortgage and if the residence, or a structure attached to the residence, is inside or intersects a 100-year floodplain. Using a novel and spatially more refined "building footprint" approach we estimate that high-risk properties sell for, on average, 21.5% less than properties in the rest of the study area. In contrast, the common, less refined approach using parcel("tax lot") data, leads to a misleading average estimated price decline of only 8.6%. This research effort is currently under review at a peer-reviewed journal. On the matching model side, we developed a conceptual framework which addresses unobserved spatial and temporal effects in hedonic matching estimation, using the watershed project and housing data collected under this grant effort. We explore three strategies of controlling for these effects, including a 2-Stage Bias Corrected Matching Estimator (2SBCME). This flexible estimation technique can be used to control for unobserved differences in home locations or neighborhoods using multiple matching steps. It can be applied including cases where existing methods are not feasible. We illustrate the performance of the new estimator with a valuation study of the effects of two large stream intervention projects along Johnson Creek on home prices for homes located downstream from the project site. Our findings indicate that the 2SBCME is a viable alternative to previously employed techniques to account for unobserved heterogeneity in a matching context, and outperforms previous methods in cases where the sample of eligible controls is small or lacks variation in a critical dimension. With respect to downstream project effects we find some evidence that downstream home values have increased as a result of the projects, which suggests that future research needs to consider downstream economic benefits, in addition to adjacency benefit, to allow for a more complete valuation of the societal gains from riparian improvements. This research effort is currently in preparation for submission to a peer-reviewed journal. In a separate matching project we focus more squarely on adjacency effects, that is watershed project effects on homes within a circular perimeter surrounding the intervention, rather than a corridor downstream of the intervention along the creek bed. We focus on the ten largest interventions within the Johnson Creek watershed. Using state-of-the-art bias-corrected matching estimators and difference-in-difference methods, we compare the relative sales price of a treated home near a project intervention to a control home further away before and after the actual intervention. We find that, for most cases, the watershed interventions have a positive effect on nearby home values. This research effort is currently in preparation for submission to a peer-reviewed journal.
Publications
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2015
Citation:
Noelwah R. Netusil, Maya Jarrad, Klaus Moeltner, Anita Morzillo, and Alan Yeakley, "Riparian Buffer Restoration Projects and Green Infrastructure" presented at the annual meetings of the Agricultural & Applied Economics Association and Western Agricultural Economics Association, San Francisco, CA, July 26-28, 2015.
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2015
Citation:
Maya Jarrad and Noelwah R. Netusil, "Urban Watershed Restoration Projects & Property Values: Johnson Creek Watershed, Oregon," presented at the International Association for Landscape Ecology 2015 World Congress, Portland, Oregon, July 5-9, 2015.
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2015
Citation:
Maya Jarrad and Noelwah R. Netusil, "Urban Watershed Restoration Projects & Property Values: Johnson Creek Watershed, Oregon," presented at: Urban Water and Flood Risk Management: The Blue-Green Advantage A China-UK-US Knowledge Exchange Workshop, University of Nottingham Ningbo Campus, China, June 15-19, 2015.
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2015
Citation:
Noelwah R. Netusil, Maya Jarrad, and Zachariah Perry, "Reed College Research: Crystal Springs and Johnson Creek," presented at the First Annual Johnson Creek Science Symposium, Portland, Oregon, May 21, 2015.
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2016
Citation:
Maya Jarrad, Noelwah R. Netusil, and Noah Jenkins, "Johnson Creek Watershed Restoration Projects in the Conservation Registry," presented at the 2016 Urban Ecosystem Research Consortium Annual Conference, Portland, Oregon, February 8, 2016.
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2016
Citation:
Maya Jarrad, Noelwah R. Netusil, "Valuing Urban Stream Restoration Using a Hybrid Repeat-Sales Hedonic Model," presented at the Western Economics Association meetings in Portland, Oregon Jun.29 -Jul. 3, 2016.
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2016
Citation:
Klaus Moeltner, Vartan Kesiz-Abnousi, Maya Jarrad, Noelwah R. Netusil, "Adaptive matching estimators for property valuation with application to urban stream restoration," presented at the USDA-NIFA AFRI project directors meeting, AAEA post-conference workshop Boston, MA, Aug. 3, 2016.
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2016
Citation:
Jed Cohen, Klaus Moeltner, "Controlling for unobserved spatial effects in matching models," presented at the W3133 Western Regional meetings, Portland, OR, Feb. 24-26, 2016.
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2016
Citation:
Vartan Kesiz-Abnousi, Klaus Moeltner, "Which Matching Models Can We Trust to Recover the Marginal Willingness to Pay for Environmental Amenities?" presented at Camp Resources, Wrightsville Beach, NC, Aug. 7-8, 2016.
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2017
Citation:
Jed Cohen, Klaus Moeltner, "Watershed restoration and housing markets: A first look at downstream effects," presented at the stakeholder workshop "25 Years of Johnson Creek Watershed Restoration: A Synthesis of Scientific and Economic Impacts," Reed College, Portland, OR, March 17, 2017.
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2017
Citation:
Maya Jarrad, "Mapping Johnson Creek Restoration Projects: 1990-2014," presented at the stakeholder workshop 25 Years of Johnson Creek Watershed Restoration: A Synthesis of Scientific and Economic Impacts, Reed College, Portland, OR, March 17, 2017.
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2017
Citation:
Noelwah R. Netusil, "Urban Stream Restoration Projects in Johnson Creek: Does Project Age Affect Property Sale Prices?" presented at the stakeholder workshop 25 Years of Johnson Creek Watershed Restoration: A Synthesis of Scientific and Economic Impacts, Reed College, Portland, OR, March 17, 2017.
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2017
Citation:
Vartan Kesiz-Abnousi, "Using Matching Methods to Estimate the Effect of Johnson Creek Watershed Improvements on Home Values," presented at the stakeholder workshop 25 Years of Johnson Creek Watershed Restoration: A Synthesis of Scientific and Economic Impacts, Reed College, Portland, OR, March 17, 2017.
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2017
Citation:
Noelwah R. Netusil, Maya Jarrad, Klaus Moeltner, "Floodplain Designation and Property Sale Prices in an Urban Watershed." presented at the Portland State University Economics Department Seminar series, November 17, 2017.
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2017
Citation:
Noelwah R. Netusil, "Water Quality Economics in Urban Areas: The Value of Floodplains," presented at the Oregon State University, Economics of Water Seminar series, November 29, 2017.
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2017
Citation:
Noelwah R. Netusil, Maya Jarrad, Klaus Moeltner, "Floodplain Designation and Property Sale Prices in an Urban Watershed," presented at the Lents Stabilization and Job Creation Collaborative, December 15, 2017.
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Accepted
Year Published:
2018
Citation:
Noelwah R. Netusil, Maya Jarrad, Klaus Moeltner, "Floodplain Designation and Property Sale Prices in an Urban Watershed," to be presented at the 6th World Congress of Environmental and Resource Economics, Gothenburg, Sweden, June 25-29, 2018.
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Accepted
Year Published:
2018
Citation:
Jarrad, M., N.R. Netusil, K. Moeltner, A.T. Morzillo, J.A. Yeakley (forthcoming). Urban Stream Restoration Projects: Do Project Phase, Distance, and Type Affect Nearby Property Sale Prices? Land Economics.
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Under Review
Year Published:
2018
Citation:
Netusil, N.R., M. Jarrad, K. Moeltner, Valuing urban stream restoration project attributes, Landscape and Urban Planning.
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Under Review
Year Published:
2018
Citation:
Netusil, N.R., M. Jarrad, K. Moeltner, Floodplain Designation and Property Sale Prices in an Urban Watershed, Water Resources Research.
|
Progress 02/15/16 to 02/14/17
Outputs
Target Audience:We presented preliminary results from our housing market analysis at four national conferences to a mixed audience of academic peers, practitioners, and students. Furthermore, we finalized the online database of restoration projects and posted all background material and source files for public access on the web athttps://dataverse.harvard.edu/dataset.xhtml?persistentId=doi:10.7910/DVN/L4DDCR. The target audience for these materials are watershed managers and researchers that are interested in developing their own interactive map of restoration projects. Changes/Problems:
Nothing Reported
What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?The project employed one FTE of a post-graduation undergraduate student who was responsible for completing the restoration projects database, and for compiling all source files and posting them online for public access. The student continued to interactwith numerous agencies and academic peers, thus laying the foundation for a professional network that will undoubtedly become very useful in her budding career. The project also sponsored one FTE of a graduate student, who participated inaugmenting the home sales data with detailed GIS information, and the development of the econometric programming for the matching estimation approach. This created opportunities for that student to learn new GIS and econometric programming tools. He also presented this work at the prestigious Camp Resources conference, where he had the chance to meet graduate students and faculty from leading environmental economic outfits. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?As indicated above, preliminary insights from the housing market analysis were presented to mixed audiences at four conferences and workshops. In addition, the source files for the restoration database and interactive map were posted online to be shared with a global audience. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?For the final year of this grant effort, we are aiming to accomplish the following objectives: 1) Finish and submit an emerging hedonic analysis paper using a traditional repeat-sales approach, with focus on the housing market effects of restoration projects throughout the different stages of implementation. 2) Run our matching model for the 10 largest interventions and estimated the effect on prices of nearby residential properties. 3) Combine results from (1)and (2) to examine which types of project interventions (flood control, biodiversity, recreational opportunities, etc. ) had the largest impact on the housing market. 4) Hold a stakeholder workshop in late March in Portland to share results and discuss future collaborations.
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
We finalized the Johnson Creek restoration map and database by carefully re-examining all database entries, shapefiles, and spreadsheet, and making final corrections and additions. The interactive map, accessible athttp://jcwc.conservationregistry.org was updated accordingly. In early 2017, we posted all underlying files and data online athttps://dataverse.harvard.edu/dataset.xhtml?persistentId=doi:10.7910/DVN/L4DDCR for public access. Thus, the public now has access to both usable products - the interactive project map, and the underlying source files that fed into the map. This will allow other watershed management agencies and researchers to construct similar interactive project maps in other parts of the country or abroad. On the econometric analysis side, we spend much of 2016 merging relevant GIS information for home locations with the home sales data. For example, we now have information on land cover, elevation, and acres of restoration projects in various stages of completion for EACH transaction in our data. This allows us to control for these potentially confounding effects in the analytical model. We also finalized the matching estimation approach and derived preliminary results for some of the larger interventions.
Publications
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2016
Citation:
"Valuing Urban Stream Restoration Using a Hybrid Repeat-Sales Hedonic Model," presented at the Western Economics Association meetings in Portland, Oregon Jun.29 -Jul. 3, 2016.
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2016
Citation:
"Adaptive matching estimators for property valuation with application to urban stream restoration,"presented at the USDA-NIFA AFRI project directors meeting, AAEA post-conference workshop Boston, MA, Aug. 3, 2016
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2016
Citation:
"Controlling for unobserved spatial effects in matching models," presented at the W3133 Western Regional meetings, Portland, OR, Feb. 24-26, 2016.
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2016
Citation:
Which Matching Models Can We Trust to Recover the Marginal Willingness to Pay for
Environmental Amenities? presented at Camp Resources, Wrightsville Beach, NC, Aug. 7-8, 2016.
|
Progress 02/15/15 to 02/14/16
Outputs
Target Audience:We presented our updated GIS map of watershed interventions, as well as preliminary results from our housing market analysis at the following conferences and seminars: Agricultural & Applied Economics Association and Western Agricultural Economics Association, San Francisco, CA, July 26-28, 2015. Audience: academic peers, students. International Association for Landscape Ecology 2015 World Congress, Portland, Oregon, July 5-9, 2015.Audience: academic peers, students, practitioners, watershed managers, city planners. China-UK-US Knowledge Exchange Workshop, University of Nottingham Ningbo Campus, China, June 15-19, 2015. Audience: international academic peers. First Annual Johnson Creek Science Symposium, Portland, Oregon, May 21, 2015.Audience: academic peers, students, practitioners, watershed managers, city planners. Urban Ecosystem Research Consortium Annual Conference, Portland, Oregon, February 8, 2016.Audience: academic peers, students, practitioners, watershed managers, city planners. Changes/Problems:The only change to report is a change in personnel for our technical collaborator (consultant) at the Johnson Creek Watershed Council. Specifically, our original contact there, Ms. Robin Jenkinson, left the agency in early 2015. Her successor,Noah Jenkins, took over as our direct collaborator at that agency. This did not cause any delays or changes to the goals or objectives of the project. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?The project employed one FTE of a post-graduation undergraduate student who was responsible for enhancing the restoration projects database, and for compiling the home sales data. The student interacted with numerous agencies and academic peers, acquired GIS and spreadsheet skills, and gave a poster presentation at local conference. The project also sponsored one FTE of a graduate student, who participated in the preparation of the home sales data, augmenting the sales data with census and other ancillary information, and the development of the iterative bidding algorithm, fine-tuned to the Portland market. This created opportunities for that student to learn new GIS and programming tools, and become familiar with extracting information from census files. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?As indicated above, the updated restoration projects database, as well as preliminary insights from a housing market analysis were presented to mixed audiences at five conferences and workshops, ranging from local to international scope. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?For year two of this grant effort, we are aiming to accomplish the following objectives: 1) Complete the simulation of the Portland housing market such that the distribution of predicted (simulated) home prices closely follows the distribution of actual home prices for a chosen time period. 2) Using this simulation framework, derive the true economic effect of one or more watershed restoration interventions. 3) With this true benchmark in hand, compare the performance of different empirical models to derive the economic effect. Special focus will be given to adaptive matching estimators with a flexible mix of control homes. 4) Using the best estimator coming out of the simulation exercise, estimate the combined economic impact of selected restoration interventions in the JCWS. 5) Share our findings at conferences, seminars, and workshops.
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
One goal of this project is to develop publicly available data on restoration projects in the Johnson Creek Watershed. Many projects were available in the Conservation Registry (CR), a free online database created by Defenders of Wildlife in 2008 that is currently owned by NatureServe. However, the projects in the Johnson Creek Watershed Restoration Project Census in the CR had few analyzable variables, there were numerous duplicate entries, entries included interventions other than restoration projects, and many projects had inaccurate or missing footprints. To update and augment existing records, we worked closely withRobin Jenkinson, the Watershed Science Director at Johnson Creek Watershed Council (JCWC), and by Noah Jenkins, the Riparian Program Manager at JCWC. We also contacted restoration partners including the City of Portland, East Multnomah Soil and Water Conservation District (EMSWCD), Metro Regional Government, Water Environment Services of Clackamas County, the City of Gresham, and Multnomah County Road Services, and used the Oregon Watershed Restoration Index to acquire updates on their respective projects. We compiled the existing data from all the restoration partners in the CR, identified gaps, and filled in the missing information where possible by contacting project leads. Overall, we added 42 previously missing projects, updated GIS footprints for an additional 34 projects, and added numerous details on project components and implementation for all resulting 199 interventions. The useable products from this work are: a) The publicly accessible, online, interactive database of all projects housed in the CR, b) The archived shapefile of the projects that fit the restoration definition used in this study, and c) The companion Excel file with variables that can be used in regressions or other statistical analysis. The interactive database is hosted athttp://jcwc.conservationregistry.org/. We also compiled the to date most comprehensive and complete dataset on home sales in the Portland Metropolitan area between 1988 and 2014. This required merging existing data up to 2011, which had been previously purchased from a commercial vendor, with sales data for 2012-2014 from local assessor's offices. After the usual cleaning steps to eliminate non-market transactions and non-residential sales, we now have 350,000 sales records for approximately 210,000 single-family residences to feed into our housing market analysis. These data will form the foundation for our study of economic impacts of watershed interventions as reflected by the housing market, using modern matching estimation techniques. We also started developing a simulated housing market for the Portland area, based on the Iterative Bidding Algorithm (IBA) developed by Kuminoff and Jarrah (2010). The basic idea is to mimic the process of buyers bidding on homes and moving into their most preferred domicile using computational simulation. This approach allows for an unambiguous identification of true welfare effects of environmental interventions, such as those considered in this grant effort. We are currently in the process of refining the IBA, accelerating computational speed, and experimenting with different utility and price functions.
Publications
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2015
Citation:
Noelwah R. Netusil, Maya Jarrad, Klaus Moeltner, Anita Morzillo, and Alan Yeakley "Riparian Buffer Restoration Projects and Green Infrastructure" Agricultural & Applied Economics Association and Western Agricultural Economics Association, San Francisco, CA, July 26-28, 2015.
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2015
Citation:
Maya Jarrad and Noelwah R. Netusil "Urban Watershed Restoration Projects & Property Values: Johnson Creek Watershed, Oregon" International Association for Landscape Ecology 2015 World Congress, Portland, Oregon, July 5-9, 2015.
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2015
Citation:
Maya Jarrad and Noelwah R. Netusil "Urban Watershed Restoration Projects & Property Values: Johnson Creek Watershed, Oregon" Urban Water and Flood Risk Management: The Blue-Green Advantage A China-UK-US Knowledge Exchange Workshop, University of Nottingham Ningbo Campus, China, June 15-19, 2015.
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2015
Citation:
Noelwah R Netusil, Maya Jarrad, and Zachariah Perry "Reed College Research: Crystal Springs and Johnson Creek" First Annual Johnson Creek Science Symposium, Portland, Oregon, May 21, 2015.
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2016
Citation:
Maya Jarrad, Noelwah R. Netusil, and Noah Jenkins. Johnson Creek Watershed Restoration Projects in the Conservation Registry 2016 Urban Ecosystem Research Consortium Annual Conference, Portland, Oregon, February 8, 2016.
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