Ballot Measures for Open Space Conservation: Economic and Institutional Processes in Cities

Abstract

This article examines referendums for open space conservation, focusing on an assessment of their likelihood in cities. It presents data on conservation referendums, over 15 years, based on the Trust for Public Land’s LandVote® database. Economic and institutional factors of influence are explored across cities, testing whether those factors explain differences in the likelihood of referendums and their passage. One finding is that the frequency of conservation referendums varies dramatically across American cities. Additional findings, from a pooled time-series analysis, are that economic and institutional contexts of cities affect the likelihood of conservation referendums. The likelihood of referendums and their passage is further tested across alternative models to evaluate the robustness of the findings. While its central contribution is to research on local referendums, the article connects to the political market framework to identify factors influencing the likelihood of open space referendums.