The value of neighborhood greenspace for children

Abstract

Across the globe, urbanization is increasing, intensifying the pressure on greenspaces, which affects all its users, including children. This is potentially concerning since exposure to nature enhances children's health and well-being. With regard to well-being, while robust evidence is present on the positive relationship between exposure to nature and well-being of children, currently no monetary valuation of the well-being benefits exists, making them more difficult to appropriately include in public decision-making regarding greenspace development. This study, for the first time, puts a monetary value on neighborhood greenspace exposure for children using the life satisfaction approach (LSA). This approach has been employed for the monetary valuation of environmental goods and issues but has not been extended yet to value the well-being of children. The LSA quantifies the influence of neighborhood greenspace on children's life satisfaction (LS) and compares it to the impact of other determinants of their LS that can be valued in monetary terms. In that way, the LSA calculates the amount of money to offset a change in neighborhood greenspace to keep the child at the same level of LS. As a result, the LSA does not require children or their parents to assign monetary values themselves. Data were gathered from 430 parent-child pairs in 29 different primary schools in Flanders (age range of children 10-12). The monetary value will be determined based on the tradeoff between the impact of the exposure of neighborhood greenspace on children’s LS and the impact of working hours of parents and time children spend with their parents on children’s LS. This time will be valued using the market replacement cost and opportunity cost method. The results of the study reveal the monetary value of neighborhood greenspace in terms of improvements in children's self-reported LS.