Conjoint Preference Estimation for Residential Land Use Policy Evaluation.

Abstract : Residential environments were defined in terms of seven attributes pertaining to off-lot visual environmental quality, on-lot space-using characteristics, and house price. Tradeoffs among these attributes can indicate, for example, whether individuals would sacrifice private space for an improvement in visual environmental quality. A probability sample of self-identified prospective homebuyers in the Milwaukee metropolitan area yielded 123 completed interviews. Each respondent traded off several pairs of attributes through a preference ranking of combinations of attribute levels. Metric estimates of the parameters of a separable utility function were calculated from these rankings using a conjoint measurement algorithm, a nonmetric multidimensional scaling procedure.