Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

Open space conservation is a defining policy challenge of our time. With growing urbanization, the conservation of resources takes center stage in global debates on livability in cities. Multiple public goods result from the conservation of natural resources in metropolitan areas. They include, for example, improved environments for public health, recreation, and sustainable food systems. For these and related aims, cities are pursuing more and more alternative approaches for the conservation of those resources.

We examine the role of direct democracy in open space conservation. Cities increasingly rely on the ballot box to obtain approval for conservation programs. The use of ballot measures for conservation is crucial in cities where natural resources are declining, particularly in the context of rapid urbanization. The need for resource conservation is prompting governments, civic and not-for-profit organizations, and citizens to seek ballot measures for the conservation of existing resources.

Some cities have relied on referendums for many decades, but many cities rely little or not on this democratic mechanism. Yet, in a growing number of cities, referendums are becoming a crucial mechanism for enabling conservation projects. The most ambitious projects of land conservation in fact require a large investment of public resources. American voters have approved over $79,590 million in conservation funds since 1988. Whether to employ ballot measures for conservation thus involves decisions of growing importance for cities seeking to protect ecological resources in contexts of economic and policy change.

We present a unique data set of conservation referendums held over fifteen years, based on the Trust for Public Land’s LandVote database. Data for independent and control variables are compiled from multiple sources. These data are pooled for testing whether economic and policy factors shape differences in the likelihood of referendums and their passage. While the central contribution is to research on local direct democracy, the paper also connects to the political market framework to identify factors influencing the likelihood of open space referendums.

The units of analysis are cities from metropolitan areas. Given that unit of analysis, our data are municipal-level referendums for land conservation. Our empirical strategy is a pooled time-series analysis, allowing us to model the probability of passage (or failure) of local referenda. After a pooled time-series model is specified, the outcome of interest—passage of conservation referenda—are tested for alternative factors of influence. Specifically, we employ pooled quasi-maximum likelihood estimation (quasi-MLE), to focus on consistent estimation of the dependent variable’s conditional mean, and include alternative tests that check for robustness.

Our preliminary findings show that the frequency of conservation referendums varies dramatically across cities. Specific findings are that economic and policy instruments influence the likelihood of conservation referendums. Implications are discussed for land conservation policy and politics, focusing on the role of direct democracy in policy change. Conservation policy research emphasizes the urgency of land conservation in an increasingly urbanized society. Our study contributes to this growing debate by highlighting the instrumental role of direct democracy in conservation policies and programs.