Effects of noise emitted by military aircraft on housing close to an air base: The case of Gando Air Base (Spain)

Abstract

Assessing the impact of environmental externalities has become one of the essential aspects in making economic and urban planning decisions. Our goal focuses on the innovative assessment of noise pollution emitted by military aircraft located at Gando Air Base in 2012. Its impact on the housing market was analyzed for 6447 households affected by more than 55 decibels, limiting our study to three municipalities of Gran Canaria (Spain): Telde, Agüimes and Ingenio. We propose to test several specifications for the hedonic price model and we test among them. This is a basic pre-requisite to estimate the parameters needed to inform policy markets. Our preferred model is a semi-logarithmic specification. We conclude from its results that noise pollution emitted by military aircraft positively affects the price of housings in the area when they are between 55 and 70 decibels so the fact that a property is near a noise source is not in itself conclusive evidence of a loss of real state values.