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Abstract
Up to 60 per cent of potable water supplied to Perth, Western Australia, is extracted
from the groundwater system that lies below the northern part of the metropolitan
area. Many of the urban wetlands are groundwater-dependent and excessive groundwater
extraction and climate change have resulted in a decline in water levels in the
wetlands. In order to inform decisions on conserving existing urban wetlands, it is beneficial
to be able to estimate the economic value of the urban wetlands. Applying the
Hedonic Property Price approach to value urban wetlands, we found that distance to
the nearest wetland and the number of wetlands within 1.5 km of a property significantly
influence house sales price. For a property that is 943 m away from the nearest
wetland, which is the average distance to the wetland in this study, reducing the wetland
distance by 1 m will increase the property price by AU$42.40. Similarly, the existence
of an additional wetland within 1.5 km of the property will increase the sales
price by AU$6976. For a randomly selected wetland, assuming a 20 ha isolated circular
wetland surrounded by uniform density housing, the total sales premium to
surrounding properties was estimated to be around AU$140 million (AU$40 million
and AU$230 million).