The role of landscape amenities in regional development: Evidence from Swiss municipality data

Several recent regional and migration studies have identified landscape amenities as potentially important drivers of migration and local economic change in the United States. To date, these empirical approaches have rarely been applied to European data in spite of an impressive European cultural landscape heritage. Here, we apply a regional adjustment model to data from 2467 municipalities in Switzerland to examine how landscape amenities and related policies affected regional development along with fiscal, demographic and infrastructure variables in the period from 1995 to 2005. In the population equation, the coefficients of the standard variables show a consistent pattern that parallels the findings of earlier work. Moreover, we find that population was positively affected by closeness to major lakes and by abundance of open space. However evidence on positive effects of traditional landscape elements such as extensive orchards and vineyards is limited. Furthermore, municipalities with national heritage townscapes grew less than those without, while the density of hiking trails had no significant effect. In the employment equation, employment was consistently affected by demographic factors and accessibility but not by the landscape amenity variables, except that employment grew less in municipalities that are part of an inventory of nationally significant landscapes. The lack of measurable local benefits from nationally significant landscapes and townscapes suggests that policies to preserve these amenities should be implemented and financed by the national government.

Research highlights
► This paper studies the impact of landscape on regional development in Switzerland.
► Population growth is partly, employment growth hardly driven by landscape amenities.
► Managed landscape elements matter where they are scarce and incomes are high.
► Only targeted agricultural support is positively associated with population growth.
► Limited local benefits of nationally important amenities suggest national financing.