External effects of neighbourhood parks and landscape elements on high-rise residential value

Neighbourhood parks provide recreation opportunities and amenity to nearby residents and improve the quality of the environment and life. Their provision and protection could be facilitated by a deeper understanding of their multiple values. The hedonic pricing method, using statistical techniques to estimate the part of a price due to a particular attribute of a commodity, assessed the external effects of neighbourhood parks on the transaction price of high-rise private residential units in Hong Kong. The empirical results derived from 1471 transactions in a district indicated that neighbourhood parks could lift price by 16.88%, including 14.93% for availability and 1.95% for view. Comparing with other landscape elements, neighbourhood parks induced the heaviest investment intention in home-buying behaviour. Harbour view attracted a premium of 5.1%, but mountain view was surprisingly not welcomed. Street view, considered as unappealing, suppressed price. Residents were insensitive to building landscape due to its ubiquity in the compact city. The scarcity of neighbourhood parks in the city has pushed their hedonic value to an exceptionally high level, providing guidance to revamp the policies, planning and management of urban greenspaces in tandem with the sustainable city quest. Copyright © 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.