| Popis: |
Environmental regulation often involves the need to impose limits on the ways in which individuals can use their property. From municipal bylaws protecting urban trees, to greenbelt zoning and designation of land as critical habitat for endangered species, environmental restrictions can range from minor to stringent limits on the prospective private use of land by the owner. The objective of this paper is to generate empirical evidence on individual attitudes toward such prospective environmental regulatory “takings”. What role does the strength of formal legal protection for property rights play in influencing individual attitudes and demands for compensation?In this paper, I use an experimental survey to generate relevant evidence. The survey is administered to Canadian and US respondents, to exploit the underlying difference in the constitutional status of property rights between Canada and the US. While government faces constitutional limits on its ability to take property in the US, in Canada such a constitutional right was deliberately excluded from the Charter. Participants are asked to provide financial (scaled categories) and attitudinal responses (7 point scale) to a vignette that proposes development restrictions on a coastal property. Results are analyzed using ordered logit regressions and equivalence of means tests. The survey is structured to allow analysis of the results controlling for individuals’ prior legal beliefs, as well as differences in the formal legal status of property rights. The durability of individuals’ beliefs is assessed by giving “correct” information about the law, then soliciting further responses. The results indicate that there is no independent significance associated with the difference in the formal legal status of property rights between Canada and the US. However, there is significant variation in the individual attitudes and financial demands of respondents in both the Canadian and US samples. While legal beliefs appear to be a significant explanatory variable, these beliefs do not appear to remain significant once individuals receive “correct” information about the law. |
