Land conservation efforts throughout the U.S. enhance ecological amenities while generating wealth in the housing market through capitalization of amenities. This paper estimates the benefits of conservation that are capitalized into proximate home values and quantifies how those benefits are distributed across demographic groups. Using detailed property and household-level data from Massachusetts, we estimate that new land conservation led to $62 million in new housing wealth equity. However, houses owned by low-income or Black or Hispanic households are less likely to be located near protected areas, and hence, these populations are less likely to benefit financially. Direct study of the distribution of this new wealth from capitalized conservation is highly unequal, with the richest quartile of households receiving 43%, White households receiving 91%, and the richest White households receiving 40%, which is nearly 140% more than would be expected under equal distribution. We extend our analysis using census data for the entire United States and observe parallel patterns. We estimate that recent land conservation generated $9.8 billion in wealth through the housing market and that wealthier and White households benefited disproportionately. These findings suggest regressive and racially disparate incidence of the wealth benefits of land conservation policy.

State and local governments put hundreds of referendums on the ballot each year. Often they pass but sometimes they fail. What happens after a successful or failed attempt at the ballot box? Do advocates go back to voters with another request? And if they do, do they tend to succeed? We employ a regression discontinuity empirical framework to causally estimate referendum dynamics in the arena of land conservation. Our results suggest municipalities where a referendum just barely fails hold about 0.5 more referendums and pass about 0.28 more referendums than municipalities that just barely pass, meaning initial defeat is often reversed. We also investigate whether strategic changes are made in election approaches for those that try again. We find no evidence of systematic patterns in strategic revisions for municipalities that fail their first referendum. However, when revisions are made, our evidence suggests that voters appear to respond positively.

This data corresponds to the article "Institutional Repositories and Academic SocialNetworks: Competition or Complement? A Study of Open Access Policy Compliance vs. ResearchGate Participation." (2017-08-07)