The impacts of environment-friendly transportation accessibility on housing prices : empirical evidence from China

Abstract

Developing an accessible and environment-friendly transport system is an effective means of solving many urban problems, such as traffic congestion and noise/air pollution. Environment-friendly transportation modes (e.g., walking and mass public transport) have gained increasing popularity and attracted substantial attention from, inter alia, policy makers and academics. Environment-friendly transportation accessibility should, in theory, affect housing prices, as housing purchasers should be willing to pay extra for such a desirable attribute. As of today, most of the relevant studies have been conducted in the West. There are, however, much fewer empirical studies in China, the largest developing country which is undergoing rapid urbanization and motorization. In this thesis, I seek to shed light on the role of environment-friendly transportation accessibility (more specifically, walking accessibility, bus accessibility, and bus rapid transit (BRT) accessibility) in determining housing prices. Using a database of 22,586 second-hand residential properties in 358 multi- or high-story residential complexes in Xiamen (a typical bus-dependent city in China), spatial econometric models are estimated to investigate the relationships between environment-friendly transportation accessibility and housing prices. The empirical findings are summarized below: First, since a single variable (e.g., Walk Score) cannot comprehensively describe walking accessibility as a housing price influencing amenity, I have applied the cumulative opportunity approach to measuring this amenity. To the best of my knowledge, this is the first study that uses this approach to investigate the impact of walking accessibility on housing prices. Based on this approach, I find that walking accessibility has different impacts on housing prices under different conditions. Moreover, I found that access to “basic” public services (e.g., transit services) has a stronger positive impact on the prices of low-end (cheaper) housing than on those of high-end (more expensive) housing. This can be explained by the varying demands of wealthy and low-income households. Second, bus accessibility can be decomposed into to-bus accessibility and by-bus accessibility. Previous studies generally agree that the to-bus accessibility exerts an imperceptible impact effect on housing prices. However, empirical results in this study show that the impact is positive and significant. An explanation is the high quality of bus services in Xiamen that make the to-bus accessibility valuable or desirable. The reliability of bus services makes Xiamen a bus-dependent city. In addition, the by-bus accessibility (more specifically, bus frequency and travel time to the city center) also has a significant positive impact on housing prices. However, the empirical results suggest significant spatial heterogeneity in the capitalization effects. Finally, regarding the capitalization effects of BRT, I find that BRT accessibility (or accessibility to BRT stations) positively affects housing prices. On the other hand, proximity to BRT corridors has a negative impact on housing prices. In addition, BRT accessibility has a stronger positive impact on housing prices in the peripheral areas than in the central areas of the city. The last two findings have rarely been identified in existing literature. The empirical findings of this study are of practical value to policy makers including (1) informing urban planners/designers to plan/design cities with an adequate level of environment-friendly transportation accessibility; (2) offering an evidence-based approach to implementing value capture schemes for financing investments in urban infrastructure; and (3) providing the basis for mitigating the negative externality of proximity to the transit corridor, jointly constructing comprehensive hospitals and other compatible amenities, and so forth.