Hold the line: Modeling private coastal adaptation through shoreline armoring decisions

W. Jason Beasley and Steven Dundas

Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, 2021, vol. 105, issue C

Abstract: A primary conduit for coastal adaptation to climate change on private land is the hardening, or armoring, of the shoreline to mitigate the effects of erosion and sea-level rise (SLR). When such decisions are made at the parcel-level, there is potential for spatial spillovers, including externalities due to deflected wave action and peer effects. We estimate a discrete choice model of landowner armoring choices from 1990 to 2015 in the U.S. state of Oregon that suggests the impacts of spatial spillovers are highly influential determinants in these private adaptation decisions. Our landscape simulations excluding spatial spillovers may under-predict future armoring by 37–97 percent. From scenario-based simulations, we then demonstrate the primacy of policy, as a removal of a current land-use regulation that limits armoring has potential to significantly increase future armoring by 69 percent. Furthermore, inclusion of SLR projections suggests armoring would increase an additional 5.4 percent within four decades.

Keywords: Land use; Climate adaptation; Spatial spillovers; Erosion; Sea-level rise; Armoring (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q54 Q58 R14 R52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0095069620301200
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jeeman:v:105:y:2021:i:c:s0095069620301200

DOI: 10.1016/j.jeem.2020.102397

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Environmental Economics and Management is currently edited by M.A. Cole, A. Lange, D.J. Phaneuf, D. Popp, M.J. Roberts, M.D. Smith, C. Timmins, Q. Weninger and A.J. Yates

More articles in Journal of Environmental Economics and Management from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().