[Seminaire CREM] What are the Direct Costs of Contaminated Brownfield Sites? A Quasi-Exhaustive Hedonic Price Analysis in France - Faculté Des Sciences Economiques

Abstract:
How much does it cost to live near a Contaminated Brownfield Site (CBS)? This question is of primary importance to perform a cost-benefit analysis prior any potential redevelopment. However, measuring such direct costs is challenging due to the wide variety of variables through which CBS may affects the neighboring populations (proximity, size, number, agglomeration, pollutants, industry, etc.). While several articles well approximated the effect of the distance in their measure, they often failed to account for the other exposure variables. In this article, we improve such measure by estimating the marginal impact of CBS's areas differentiated by a set of exposure variables (mainly the distance and the prior industry). Our first contribution is thus methodological as it helps future research in determining more accurate and transferable direct cost of CBS. Then, we apply our methodology to a rich set of data encompassing more than 4 million property transactions and approximately 4000 CBS in France.