Stefan Rehak (p)

Krystian Heffner

Green areas are important part of the urban development agenda cities as they improve the quality of life of inhabitants and contribute to the overall attractiveness for potential migrants. Cities consider public green areas as valuable zones for recreational and environmental goals and use them as a strategic asset for their development plans. Since green areas are public goods it is difficult to measure their economic value as there is no information on their market price. This leads to the problems with determining the social optimal amount of green areas in the city and thus prioritizing and calibrating local development policies. In order to estimate the apartment buyers’ willingness to pay for green areas we use hedonic price method. We use data on 1334 internet apartment price offers in Bratislava from 2016 and data on green areas in Bratislava from the European Urban Atlas 2012. The analysis includes the impact of four different types of green areas –urban green areas (parks and gardens), forests, sport facilities and water on the apartment price. We measure the impact of green areas on the basis of the distance to the nearest green area and the share of green spaces in the 300 respectively 600 meters from the apartment. Our preliminary results from the spatial hedonic model shows that people are willing to pay higher prices for apartments close to forest and water, however we found a negative effect for the proximity to sport facilities. The apartments surrounded by higher share of water areas are also more expensive. Surprisingly we have not confirmed significant effect of urban green areas in Bratislava.

Jenny Montanus , Eveline van Leeuwen (p), Jos van Ommeren

Stefan Rehak

In countries such as the U.S. and the Netherlands policies promoting homeownership have long been in practice, partly based on the idea that homeowners are better citizens. From the literature it becomes clear that apart from ownership, length of residence might play an important role in explaining higher levels of citizenship of homeowners, compared to renters. In this article, the influence of different occupant types on citizenship in the Netherlands will be examined. In the Dutch case, we can differentiate between public housing tenants, who generally reside for a longer period in their home and private market tenants. The well-known endogeneity problem was solved by using public housing rates and private market housing rates at the municipality level as instruments. The results show that homeownership has indeed a clear influence on good citizenship. Notwithstanding remaining endogeneity, our results imply that the argument that homeownership stimulates good citizenship is valid.

Krystian Heffner (p)

Eveline van Leeuwen

Shopping malls, by way of comprehensive services they offer, constitute material business competition for small commerce, which starts at the stage of investment planning. Already at the stage of initial projects, the advantage of shopping malls is clearly visible. Decisions in terms of location are most often preceded by well-thought of strategies, so-called tenant mix on the basis of comprehensive market surveys, preferences and life style of consumers, or finally - demographic and economic aspects such as income, education, and age of possible clients. Subject to analysis are: possible location, competition of other commercial facilities, transportation passageways and many other aspects. Situation in the vicinity of customers’ places of residence, accessibility and car parks (usually free of charge) constitute important factors determining the advantage of the shopping malls not only over small commerce, but also over other shopping malls. In result, consumers are much more mobile than before and may visit various stores, not only those in the closest vicinity. In addition, studies of attractiveness of large Dutch commercial facilities located outside city centres indicate that they are more attractive for consumers residing within a longer distance from the centres than for the inhabitants of the said city. Therefore, they may exert influence by attracting customers inter alia from the outer areas of cities and metropolises.
This topic is relatively well examined and described in the literature. Large stores are usually a part of affiliate chains, characterised by a central ownership, management, and similarity, or a part of an integrated trade chain, which is a form of cooperation of businesses. To the producers, they offer better stability of sales and certainty of payment for the sold products when compared to small business entities. On the other hand, however, there are threats on the part of retail chains, as the stronger partner, to which both producers as well as the local trade entities are imposed. According to the producers, forcing high discounts on the basic price by the chains, participation in financing promotion of producers’ goods and application of long payment terms may even bear hallmarks of unfair competition. Small family businesses that compete with shopping malls do not have sufficient strength to obtain such discounts and delivery terms (e.g. payments) from producers, as it is possible in the case of large retail chains mentioned above.