The economic value of landscape aesthetics: Integrating contingent valuation and aesthetic assessment in a Wisconsin highway project

andscape aesthetic values can be easily overlooked or undervalued in land-use decision-making leading to less than optimal decisions. Public sector projects may undervalue the aesthetic damage they cause, which, if completely taken into account, could alter the types of projects undertaken or the ways they are constructed.;This dissertation has combined economic contingent valuation and aesthetic assessment of landscapes in a Wisconsin highway-widening project to demonstrate the viability of such a combination in attempting aesthetic valuation. While there are few economic approaches to landscape aesthetics, there is widespread use of economics, particularly cost-benefit analysis (CBA), in decision-making including the development of environmental impact statements. However, for CBA to be valid all costs and benefits must be fairly represented. To exclude aesthetic value from the analysis on the basis that beauty is intangible or priceless is often to give it a de facto value of zero in cost-benefit calculations. This dissertation sought to more persuasively represent the aesthetic damage wrought by the highway project by attaching to it a dollar figure.;The study site was a 20-mile stretch of highway between Dodgeville and Belmont in southwestern Wisconsin. A mail contingent-valuation survey asked a random sample of 660 Wisconsin households about their willingness-to-pay (WTP) for an alternative alignment of the highway that would preserve their original view. A split sample design was employed to account for the view change as seen from the perspective of residences along the highway as well as the view change as seen from vehicles on the new roadway. Both groups were shown before photographs of the roadway and also simulated post-construction photographs. The survey had a response rate of 45 percent.;The residential group had a mean WTP of...