Environmental Risk Perceptions and Market Valuation

将乏核燃料从全国100多个临时储存点运往内华达州尤卡山拟议的永久地质储存库，将涉及数千次运输或高放射性材料。利益相关者和学者都担心，这些货物将使运输路线沿线的房产蒙上污名，给居民和土地所有者带来成本。这项研究将利用南卡罗来纳州现有的乏燃料运输计划的经验，对高度宣传的乏燃料运输对财产价值的污名影响的规模和持久性进行实证测试。作为起点，我们早先的研究发现，南卡罗来纳州的发货使邻近路线的住宅物业价值下降了约3%，这项研究将包括大量的地理样本和长达十年的时间序列分析，以完善对价格影响(包括影响的梯度)的估计，以及影响的时间稳定性。该项目将开发一个一致的贝叶斯框架，对风险认知的形成以及风险认知转化为市场决定的房地产价格的方式进行实证评估。这一框架将为估计享乐模型提供基础，以便了解个人如何形成和更新关于低概率事件造成的人身伤害风险的信念。将结合市场和调查数据，评估对通过城市和农村地区的乏燃料运输的风险认知对这些地区房价的影响。这项研究的公共政策影响重大，因为正在考虑的将乏燃料从发电站运往内华达州尤卡山储存库的运输路线将通过大城市地区运输，在这些地区，潜在的财产价值影响是巨大的。尤卡山储存库的反对者认为，在评估运输路线时，甚至在决定如何更广泛地管理乏燃料时，应该考虑到这些潜在的损失。然而，这些潜在损失的规模在很大程度上仍是投机性的。这项研究将提供关于以下方面的更明确的信息：(A)在正常运营条件下，房地产价值运输的负面影响是否会持续一段时间；以及(B)沿线降价的梯度形式。

The advent of spent nuclear fuel shipments from over 100 temporary storage sites across the country to a proposed permanent geologic repository at Yucca Mountain, Nevada, would involve thousands of shipments or highly radioactive materials. Both stakeholders and scholars have raised concerns that these shipments will stigmatize properties along the transport routes, imposing costs on residents and landowners. This study will employ experience with an existing spent fuel shipping program in South Carolina to empirically test for the magnitude and longevity of stigma impacts on property values from highly publicized spent fuel shipments. Using as a point of departure our earlier research that found the South Carolina shipments to reduce residential property values adjacent to the route by approximately 3%, this study will include a large geographic sample and decade-long time series analysis to refine estimates of the impact (including the gradient of that impact) on prices, and the temporal stability of that impact. The project will develop a consistent Bayesian framework to empirically evaluate the formation of risk perceptions and the manner in which risk perceptions translate into market determined real estate prices. This framework will provide the basis for estimating hedonic models in order to understand how individuals form and update beliefs about the risk of personal harm due to low probability events. A combination of market and survey data will be used to assess the impact of risk perceptions about the transportation of spent fuel through both urban and rural areas on home prices in those areas.The public policy implications of the study are significant in that the transport routes under consideration for shipment of spent fuel from generator sites to the proposed Yucca Mountain, Nevada repository would funnel shipments through large urban areas in which the potential property value impact is enormous. Opponents of the Yucca Mountain repository have argued that these potential losses should be considered in the evaluation of transport routes and, indeed, in deciding how to manage spent fuel more generally. Yet the magnitudes of these potential losses remain largely speculative. This study will provide more definitive information about (a) whether the negative impact of the shipments of property values persists over time under normal operating conditions and (b) the shape of the gradient in the price reductions along the route.