The effects of spatial spillovers on the provision of urban environmental amenities

As land take favours the development of new artificial areas in most cities, urban green spaces (UGSs) play a key role for the quality of life and the attractiveness of cities. This paper highlights the ins and outs of the decision making ‐ process in order to stress the issues inherent to the provision of UGSs. We examine the influence of spatial spillovers in order to identify strategic interactions between neighbouring municipalities in a sample of French municipalities. Our aim is to assess the efficiency of local policies as strategic behaviours may lead to a non optimal level of UGSs. For this purpose we conducted a survey with municipal greening services given the absence of centralized data regarding the surfaces and spending for UGSs. The analysis is based on spatial econometrics techniques. Using different weight matrices, we find that data follow a spatial lag pattern. The results suggest that municipalities tend to imitate their neighbours for the provision of UGSs. It is also found that environmental amenities such as coastal area and vineyards are substitutes to UGSs.