Value of the peri-urban forest environment and spatial heterogeneity of recreational services using the hedonic approach.

Summary The question of people's preferences for forest recreation services is becoming increasingly important in urban planning considerations and strategies. The literature based on the hedonic price method for the evaluation of forest recreational services generally questions the accessibility of the nearest forest and considers the provision of recreational services as homogeneous. However, our hypothesis is that in urban and peri-urban environments, households may have preferences for the diversity of forest spaces in their residential environment. Evaluators need to understand the complementarity of forest spaces on a territory and question the overall forest environment and its variety in terms of recreational services. The objective of our first study is to estimate and compare the impact of proximity to forest recreational services on real estate prices when considering the nearest forest on the one hand and the overall forest environment, which includes the spatial heterogeneity of recreational services, on the other. We highlight the importance of considering the forest environment in economic evaluations in order to best estimate the recreational value of forests. In a second work, using auction function estimation, we investigate how the socio-economic profile of households influences their preferences in terms of recreational services of the forest environment. The results allow us to deepen our knowledge of preferences around "nature in the city" issues. They reveal heterogeneous relationships to the forest environment and its recreational qualities, which depend on the profile of the households. Finally, in a third section, we start from the observation that in the case of multi-site amenities, individuals can choose to visit different sites and at different frequencies. Using a theoretical model calibrated on real data, we reconcile Alonso's spatial approach with the accessibility of a multi-site amenity in Rosen's hedonic approach. We conclude that when there is a preference for a multi-site amenity with heterogeneous levels of quality, a misspecification of distance in hedonic models significantly impacts the evaluation of the amenity.