Hedonic Pricing to Monetize Ecosystem Services Provided by Water Sensitive Urban Design: A Comparison of Geelong, Australia and Singapore

Abstract

Water Sensitive Urban Design (WSUD) features increasingly are used for urban water management, green urban design, and improved community liveability, but relatively less data are available on the ecosystem services that WSUD provides. We used hedonic pricing, supported by qualitative surveys, in Geelong, Australia and Singapore, to evaluate benefits related to large WSUD features. For both locations there was a significant (α=0.05) inverse relationship between sale price of a residence and distance to the WSUD features.  Qualitative surveys corroborated the hedonic pricing analysis, as a majority of people appreciated benefits accrued from living near WSUD features.