Over the past several decades conservation easements have seen immense growth in their popularity. There are now over 40 million acres of easement land in the United States, up from only 1.4 million in 1998. A significant body of research exists on easements, factors that lead to their adoption, their consequences and effectiveness, and problems that arise from their use, among other topics. Our study contributes to this literature by exploring community and system-level effects on easement adoption, using Virginia as a case study, and applying a novel approach that incorporates spatial analysis and the insights of conservation professionals.
The purpose of our research was to explore whether community-level factors affect easement adoption decisions, and what those factors are. Previously established variables were investigated to gauge their relationship to easement occurrence when scaled up to the community level, as well as to test our ability to make predictions about where easements should be most likely to occur. Spatial market segmentation data was also incorporated into this analysis to determine whether it could augment our understanding of community-level factors and predictive ability. Statistical models produced were reasonably predictive. However, we suspect that this was the case for different reasons at our community scale of analysis than at the individual landowner level examined in previous research. We used surveys and interviews with easement professionals to further explore additional variables that might explain adoption patterns. Results indicate the importance of system-level factors including change agents, opinion leaders, and local government and land-use planning. / Master of Science / Conservation easements are an increasingly common form of land protection. Unlike traditional conservation methods that involve directly purchasing and protecting land, such as national parks and forests, conservation easements allow private individuals to maintain ownership of their property while also ensuring that that land is conserved, remaining both undeveloped and unsubdivided. Our research was aimed at investigating whether communitylevel social factors might affect the ability and interest of landowners to adopt easements, and we focused our efforts on the state of Virginia. A combination of information collected through surveys and interviews with conservation professionals from across the state and publically available data were used to address the topic. Our results contained important lessons for conservationists and researchers alike. One such lesson was the apparent propensity for landowners who are more likely to adopt easements to have characteristics different, and sometimes even opposite, the general characteristics of people living in their surrounding community. Other lessons included the identification of community-level factors that affect the likelihood of easement adoption, including the presence of influential community members, and the support or opposition of local governments and land-use planning to easements.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:VTETD/oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/73650 |
| Date | 09 December 2016 |
| Creators | Hemby, Tyler Lee |
| Contributors | Forest Resources and Environmental Conservation, Prisley, Stephen P., Stern, Marc J., Sorice, Michael G. |
| Publisher | Virginia Tech |
| Source Sets | Virginia Tech Theses and Dissertation |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | ETD, application/pdf |
| Rights | In Copyright, http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ |
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