Valuing Urban Green Spaces: A Decade of Access and Residents’ Willingness to Pay in Shanghai

This study aims to investigate residents’ marginal willingness to pay (WTP) for accessible urban green spaces (UGSs) in Shanghai from 2012 to 2021, using a comprehensive UGS accessibility (UGSA) indicator based on an improved nSFCA method. The UGSA indicator is incorporated into a hedonic pricing model, and multiple global regressions with multilevel data structures are employed to identify a suitable and accurate estimation strategy to determine the impact of UGSA on housing prices. The results show that WTP for UGSA varies significantly across categories and years, as well as between homebuyers and renters, with homebuyers having a much higher WTP compared to renters. Furthermore, neighborhood UGSA is generally more preferred than utmost UGSA. By differentiating UGSA into “neighborhood” and “utmost” levels and conducting a decade-long longitudinal analysis of both homebuyers and renters, this study contributes to two key academic debates: the spatial scaling of amenity valuation and the role of property rights in the capitalization of public goods. Employing a robust spatial econometric framework, our research provides novel insights into these complex dynamics within a hyper-dense urban context. The research contributes to the understanding of the economic value of UGSA by providing valuable insights for urban planning, policy-making, and real estate development, highlighting the importance of considering the spatial, temporal, and heterogeneous aspects of UGSA when estimating its economic value.