Construct validity is concerned with the consistency of empirical measures with theoretical relationships. This paper reviews and extends the theoretical relationship between averting costs and willingness to pay. Measures of these two theoretical constructs with empirical averting costs savings...

The factors in uencing participation in both purchase of development rights and transfer of development rights farmland preservation programs are analyzed using data from a survey of agricultural landowners and from spatial data on individual farms collected using GIS for four Maryland counties....

Policy makers have turned to competition- based voluntary-enrollment programs as a cost-effective way to achieve preferred land uses. This paper studies bidder behavior in an innovative auction-based program in which farmers compete to sell and retire the right to develop their land. We derive a...

More than 80 governmental entities concerned about sprawl, open space, and farmland have implemented purchase of development rights (PDR) programs preserving 2.23 million acres at a cost of $5.47 billion. Are PDR programs effective in slowing the rate and acres of farmland loss? Employing...

A conceptual framework distinguishes farmland retention institutions and with a survey of various literatures, interviews, and original policy design, classifies 28 techniques in four types: regulatory, incentive-based, governmental-participatory, and hybrid. The analysis reveals that techniques...