Dissertation Defence: Three Essays on the Impacts of Environmental Amenities on Residential Property Prices

Amarpreet Kaur, supervised by Dr. John Janmaat, will defend their dissertation titled “Three Essays on the Impacts of Environmental Amenities on Residential Property Prices” in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Interdisciplinary Graduate Studies – Sustainability theme.

An abstract for Amarpreet Kaur’s dissertation is included below.

Examinations are open to all members of the campus community as well as the general public. Registration is not required for in-person exams.

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Abstract

Households choose where to live based not only on housing features but also on the quality of essential public services, such as safe drinking water and access to good schools. These services directly influence health, well-being, and long-term opportunities, and their value is often reflected in property prices. This dissertation examines how differences in piped drinking water quality and school performance are capitalized into residential property values in British Columbia, Canada.

It begins by developing a theoretical model based on household production theory, which describes how households derive value from piped water, either by using it directly, treating it, or switching to alternative sources. This framework lays the groundwork for understanding how households respond to differences in service quality when making housing decisions. Further, to validate and implement the empirical strategy, the second chapter focuses on school quality, a widely studied determinant of residential choice and housing prices. Using detailed housing transaction data, Foundation Skills Assessment (FSA) scores, and school catchment boundaries, spatial econometric models are used to estimate price effects. The results show that higher FSA scores for both elementary and middle schools are significantly associated with increased property values, especially in neighbourhoods where school assignment is tied to geographic boundaries. Moreover, a bootstrapping approach is applied to construct distribution-free confidence intervals, confirming the strength and precision of these estimates.

Lastly, the same modelling strategy is applied to examine the effect of drinking water advisories, like boil water advisories, on housing prices. The analysis shows that both the presence and duration of these advisories are linked to noticeable price declines, particularly in communities served by small or medium-sized water systems. This research contributes in several ways: it expands the theory of household location choice to include water quality, provides new evidence of how public services like schools and water influence property values, and demonstrates the value of spatial and resampling techniques in housing market analysis. The findings provide a quantification of the benefits from public investments in services like education and water infrastructure. These results can be used by decision makers to estimate a return on such public investment.