Demand for urban forests in United States cities

Abstract

Extensive economic investigations have shown a variety of benefits derived from urban forests, but study on demand for urban forests remains limited. This study investigates the impact of selected potential factors on the demand for urban forests at the city level. An empirical economic model is used to examine and estimate the demand for urban forests in all cities with population over 100,000 in the United States. The empirical findings suggest that the demand for urban forests is elastic with respect to price and highly responsive to changes in income. Urban forest area increases as total population grows but at a lower rate than population growth. © 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.