Author(s):
Dawn C. Parker, Assistant Professor* - George Mason University
J. Gary Polhill, Research Scientist - Macaulay Institute, Aberdeen, Scotland
Nicholas M. Gotts, Research Scientist - Macaulay Institute, Aberdeen, Scotland
Abstract:
The majority of agent-based models of land-use change use non-market mechanisms to allocate land-use change. Models that allow transfer of land between agents and/or land uses often operate using fixed land prices or land demand structures. To date, few agent-based models have implemented market-based land exchange mechanisms that produce spatial patterns of land rents reflecting local heterogeneity of land managers and land suitability. Models that have functioning land markets assume a single agent decision making strategy: short-run profit maximization. While lively debates have occurred regarding the importance of the omitted land market mechanisms, no structured comparisons have been undertaken to explore the effects of this omission
In this talk, we present a series of experiments comparing FEARLUS, an agent-based model of rural land use, to ELMM (Endogenous Land Market Model), a version of FEARLUS that implements key land market mechanisms. While FEARLUS exchanged land at a fixed price, and required solvent neighbors to acquire the parcels of insolvent neighbors, ELMM implements a variety of voluntary bidding strategies, based on expectations of future profitability from the new parcel. Local land prices emerge as a result of this market process. Previous work with FEARLUS indicated that certain imitative strategies reliably outperform innovative strategies. We test the robustness of these results under ELMM. We also examine the effects of the land market mechanism on rates of change, distributions, and spatial patterns of land holdings, with a particular focus on the effects of the market on consolidation over time and space.
