Estimation of the Nonmarket Benefits of Agricultural Land Retention in Eastern Canada

Abstract

We assess the nonmarket value for retention of farmland in the Moncton area of New Brunswick. We examine a number of factors explaining household external values for farmland preservation and expand on previous work by Beasley et al., Bergstrom et al., and Halstead. Our findings indicate that the marginal external benefit of preserving farmland in general in this region is small compared to the market price and that spatial embedding is not automatic in contingent valuation studies.