Homeowners’ willingness to pay for changes in urban tree canopy cover in the United States

Abstract

Homeowners’ willingness to pay for urban forest benefits can be inferred from hedonic property value studies, which use real estate transactions to estimate the elasticity between home value and tree canopy cover (i.e., the % change in home value for a 1 % change in tree cover). We compiled a meta-dataset of 17 hedonic studies to predict this elasticity for 64,658 urban census tracts across the contiguous United States. Three benefit transfer methods were evaluated: matching value transfer using a nearest-neighbor technique, unit value transfer using weighted mean elasticities, and function transfer using a meta-regression model. The matching method produced the lowest out-of-sample transfer errors and best reproduced the observed distribution of elasticities. Using the matching method, we estimated that home values increase $9-$134 per home (2020 USD) for a 1 % increase in urban tree cover. Using projected changes in urban tree cover from 2020 to 2030, which are largely negative, we estimated regional home value losses ranging from $1.7 to $4.8 billion, with a total national loss of $11.8 billion. These results highlight the significant economic value of maintaining and expanding urban tree canopy cover in U.S. cities.

Citation

Haight, Robert G.; Huang, Qiuqiong; Kovacs, Kent; Ellis, Alexis. 2025. Homeowners’ willingness to pay for changes in urban tree canopy cover in the United States. Journal of Environmental Management. 396: 128051. 13 p. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvman.2025.128051.