Cultural landscapes and heritage values : a spatial hedonic approach

Cultural Landscape Characteristics and Heritage Values A Spatially Explicit Hedonic Approach This paper uses the hedonic approach to analyze the relation between cultural landscape characteristics and property values. The empirical model uses geographic information systems to create a model that adds spatially explicit variables of landscape structure to the classic hedonic variables. Nearly 5000 house transactions in south Sweden were studied to estimate the effects of cultural landscape attributes on transaction prices. The key empirical results show that cultural heritage sites generate a premium of 3-4% for properties located in the vicinity. The results also show that the percentage of land within communities devoted to local and national preservation areas leads to a considerable increase in house prices (up to 12%) comparing to communities that have less land devoted to preservation areas.