The Economics of Amenities and

Migration in the Pacific Northwest: 

Review of Selected Literature with 

Implications for National Forest 

Management

Brian E. Garber-Yonts

United States 

Department of 

Agriculture

Forest Service

Pacific Northwest 

Research Station

General Technical 

Report

PNW-GTR-617

October 2004
The Forest Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture is dedicated to the principle of 

multiple use management of the Nation’s forest resources for sustained yields of wood, 

water, forage, wildlife, and recreation. Through forestry research, cooperation with the 

States and private forest owners, and management of the National Forests and National 

Grasslands, it strives—as directed by Congress—to provide increasingly greater service to 

a growing Nation.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) prohibits discrimination in all its programs and 

activities on the basis of race, color, national origin, gender, religion, age, disability, political 

beliefs, sexual orientation, or marital or family status. (Not all prohibited bases apply to all 

programs.) Persons with disabilities who require alternative means for communication of 

program information (Braille, large print, audiotape, etc.) should contact USDA’s TARGET 

Center at (202) 720-2600 (voice and TDD).

To file a complaint of discrimination, write USDA, Director, Office of Civil Rights, Room 326-

W, Whitten Building, 14th and Independence Avenue, SW, Washington, DC 20250-9410 or 

call (202) 720-5964 (voice and TDD). USDA is an equal opportunity provider and employer.

USDA is committed to making its information materials accessible to all USDA customers 

and employees.

Author

Brian E. Garber-Yonts is a research economist, Forestry Sciences Laboratory, 

3200 SW Jefferson Way, Corvallis, OR 97333.
Abstract

Garber-Yonts, Brian E. 2004. The economics of amenities and migration in the 

Pacific Northwest: review of selected literature with implications for national 

forest management. Gen. Tech. Rep. PNW-GTR-617. Portland, OR: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Pacific Northwest Research Station. 48 p.

This paper reviews literature on the influence of nonmarket amenity resources 

on population migration. Literature reviewed includes migration and demographic 

studies; urban and regional economics studies of amenities in labor markets, retirement migration, and firm location decisions; nonmarket valuation studies using hedonic price analysis of amenity resource values; land use change studies; and studies of the economic development influence of forest preservation. A synthesis of the 

literature finds that the influence of amenities is consistently shown to be a positive 

factor contributing to population growth in urban and rural areas characterized by 

proximity to public forest lands. Beyond this broad finding, however, little research 

has been conducted at an appropriate scale to be directly useful in forest management and planning decisions. Areas for further research are identified.

Keywords: Amenities, migration, hedonic studies, rural development, land use 

change, regional economics.
Contents

 1 Introduction

 2 Definitions and Origins

 2 Amenities

 4 Migration

 4 Northwest Population and Migration Trends

8 Principal Lines of Research

 9 Migration and Demographic Studies

 15 Urban and Regional Economics and Nonmarket Valuation

 29 Land Use Change

 30 Economics of Forest Preservation and Wilderness Designation

 33 Integration and Synthesis: Key Amenities and Migration Economics 

 Research Issues Relevant to Natural Resource Management

 34 Demand for Amenity-Rich Locations

 35 Amenity Compensation

 36 Retirement Migration

 36 Expanding Wildland-Urban Interface and Forest Fragmentation

 37 National Forest Response to Amenity-Driven Migration

 38 Conclusions

 39 Acknowledgments

40 Metric Equivalents

40 Literature Cited
1

The Economics of Amenities and Migration in the Pacific Northwest

Introduction

Population growth in the Pacific Northwest looms as a major issue for forest planners, policymakers, and resource managers. Both urban and rural populations have 

grown dramatically over the past three decades, causing some rural counties to 

triple their populations within that timespan and causing widespread impacts on the 

infrastructure of Northwest cities and towns. By all accounts, key attractions of the 

region are the quality of the natural environment in the Pacific Northwest and the 

proximity to the abundant recreational opportunities available on the extensive forest land owned by state and federal governments. 

Increasingly, agricultural and forest land is converted for residential development throughout the West, both in the form of intensive subdivision as well as 

large-lot dispersed residential parcelization. As this conversion proceeds, expanding and blurring the lines between urban, rural, and wildlands, the nature of human 

uses of the forest landscape is changing in fundamental ways. How to address the 

natural resource demands of a growing population in the Northwest region is a 

critical problem facing planners and federal land managers. Any attempt to gain 

an understanding of those demands and how they may change in the future would 

logically start by integrating a complex body of research cutting across numerous 

disciplines. The technical quality of many studies of spatial and temporal trends 

in migration and land use conversion published in recent years has improved with 

advances in statistical methods. With improved methods of analysis, however, much 

of the literature has addressed increasingly narrow questions, and there has been 

little synthesis across these diverse fields of study to identify insights and conclusions on the relationships among amenity values of the natural landscape, migration, and implications for federal land management. 

This review of literature is intended to begin to draw together disparate elements of the economic and, to a lesser extent, other social science literature to identify key insights on scientific, policy, and management issues related to amenities 

and migration, focusing principally on the Northwest, and to reveal the potential for 

integrative research to aid decisionmakers facing these critical issues. The objectives of this paper are to (1) synthesize a broad range of research perspectives on 

amenities and migration and condense the available literature, both to make it accessible to planners and managers and to provide a broader perspective for researchers 

focusing on any particular area of the broader issue of amenity-driven 

migration; and (2) to review a range of research hypotheses and techniques that have 

been used in past research on this subject, to identify areas for research targeted 

on issues of concern to federal land managers and policymakers. Although this 

review incorporates a large body of literature, it is not exhaustive, and suggestions 
2

GENERAL TECHNICAL REPORT PNW-GTR-617

for further research are principally incremental extensions of previous studies and 

applications of existing models to regional data. The overarching objective is to 

provide input into a more broadly integrative approach to social science research to 

aid forest policy and management decisions.

The geographic scope of this review is principally the Pacific Northwest; however, much of the research discussed below includes empirical applications elsewhere in the West or other regions of the United States. To the extent that research 

applied in other geographic contexts provides insight or illustrates an approach that 

would be appropriate to analyzing amenities and migration questions in the Pacific 

Northwest, it is included below. The results of the synthesis of literature and suggestions for further research also apply broadly to other regions, and particularly to 

the greater intermountain West.

Existing studies do not provide much information about the influence of natural 

amenities in the Pacific Northwest on labor force or retirement migration that is directly useful to managers and policymakers. Although the general area of research 

has been ongoing for 20 years, techniques for reliably estimating amenity values 

in the context of housing markets have been developed relatively recently. As such, 

much of the review, particularly of the economics literature, focuses on technical issues more useful to researchers than to managers. The “Integration and Synthesis” 

section attempts to draw these reviews together in the context of forest land management in the Pacific Northwest, identifying implications for both researchers and 

land managers.

Definitions and Origins

One difficulty in navigating the literatures reviewed in this paper is the inconsistency in the use of certain terms. The following is presented to provide some clarity 

on this point before proceeding further.

Amenities

Broadly speaking, an amenity is any attribute of a geographic location for which a 

resident or potential migrant would be willing to pay, either through higher housing costs, lower wages, or other location-specific costs, but for which there is no 

market through which the individual can directly purchase a given amount of that 

good (Judson et al. 1999). Economists generally use the term to refer to a subclass 

of resources and services known as public goods, which by their nature are not 

directly traded in markets and are generally not provided by private entrepreneurs 

(Randall 1987). Specifically, as used in the economics literature, amenities are 

those public goods that can only be enjoyed by being present in a particular locaVarious aspects of 

environmental quality, 

including scenic, air, 

and water quality; 

access to public 

recreational and 

cultural resources; 

and absence of 

disamenities, such 

as crime, congestion, 

and noise, all fall 

under the heading of 

amenity resources. 
3

The Economics of Amenities and Migration in the Pacific Northwest

tion. Thus, various aspects of environmental quality, including scenic, air, and 

water quality; access to public recreational and cultural resources; and absence of 

disamenities, such as crime, congestion, and noise, all fall under the heading of 

amenity resources. Clearly, desirable attributes of a place are highly subjective and 

differ from person to person. In empirical analysis, however, the focus is typically 

on attributes of sufficiently common appeal as to be identifiable in aggregate data. 

The focus of this literature review is on amenities and their effect on population 

change and implications for natural resource management, specifically land use 

and forest management. As such, the focus is on natural amenities rather than cultural or other amenities produced as part of the human environment.

Specific amenities identified in empirical research differ across literatures. As 

discussed below, labor and migration, hedonic nonmarket valuation, rural development, and land use change are some of the distinct applied fields within economic 

analysis, each with its own literature. All of these focus in one way or another on 

amenity values; however, each tends to identify a particular set of amenities related to the scale of analysis typical of the subject focus. For example, the labor 

and migration literature is concerned with broad population flows between regions 

and therefore tends to incorporate regional natural amenities, such as weather and 

climate, as well as cultural amenities and disamenities such as crime rates and congestion. In many of the studies in this literature, amenities are included in empirical 

models principally as control variables, with the main focus being on employment, 

population, and wage differentials. As such, they may be represented as an index 

combining several regional amenities (McGranahan 1999). In contrast, hedonic 

nonmarket valuation studies tend to focus on the value of site-specific amenity 

resources such as the scenic view from a particular viewpoint or proximity to a 

recreational site or landfill.

In an analysis of economic impacts of ecosystem management, Courant et al. 

(1997) pointed out that amenities can benefit both individual consumers and firms.1

A given attribute of a location can enter into the utility function of an individual 

as a consumption amenity, and the production function of a firm as a production 

amenity (Taylor and Smith 2000). Thus, e.g., high water quality in a coastal stream 

can improve the well-being of a recreational fisher by increasing her catch rate, as 

well as improving the market for a commercial fishing guide service. Amenities can 

therefore affect the locational decisions of individuals, but also play an important 

role in the locational decisions of firms. In addition to providing direct inputs into 

a firm’s production process, amenities further lower production costs by providing 

1 This observation was pointed out earlier by Roback (1982) in a more empirical context. 

See discussion in “Northwest Population and Migration Trends” section.
4

GENERAL TECHNICAL REPORT PNW-GTR-617

a form of compensation to workers, thus lowering labor costs relative to locations 

with poorer amenities.

Migration

Human migration is measured in a number of ways in the literature, and at different spatial and temporal scales. Most of the data come from the U.S. Bureau of the 

Census, at different geographic scales depending on the research question. Most 

commonly, the studies reviewed below use net inmigration at the county level as 

the measure of population growth over a given period. Data at finer geographic 

scales are available for inmigration and outmigration, e.g., census blocks, but given 

the regional focus of most studies and the difficulty of controlling for sources of 

variation at finer scales, few incorporate this degree of spatial disaggregation. The 

most useful secondary data available for testing hypotheses on the motivation for 

relocation decisions is the county-to-county migration flow data published by the 

Bureau of the Census, which provides the most spatially precise data on migration 

flows between counties of origin and destination, measured for the 5-year period 

preceding each decennial census. These data also provide considerable detail on the 

demographic characteristics of migration flows. Apart from census data, primary 

data from a few studies reviewed below include location decisions of individual 

migrants or, in some cases, representatives of firms (Carlson et al. 1998).

Northwest Population and Migration Trends

Consistent with long-term trends, population growth in the United States is expected over the next several decades to be greatest in the West and South. Research 

on population trends conducted by the Bureau of the Census (Campbell 1997) 

estimated that the population of Oregon and Washington will grow from 8.5 million to over 12 million residents over the 1995-2025 period, an increase of nearly 

42 percent. Both in relative and absolute terms, the states of the Pacific Northwest 

(Oregon and Washington) are among the fastest growing in the Nation (figs. 1 and 

2). Although other Western States are expected to grow more rapidly than Oregon 

and Washington, much of this growth is attributable to international migration and 

natural population growth (the difference between birth and deaths over a given 

period). It is notable that Oregon is expected to be second only to Florida in the rate 

of net interstate migration, with an estimated average annual increase of 7 interstate 

migrants per 1,000 residents. In comparison, California, with by far the largest 

expected population increase among U.S. states over the 30-year period, is expected 

to have negative net interstate migration, with growth coming from natural population increase and international inmigration.
5

The Economics of Amenities and Migration in the Pacific Northwest

Christensen et al. (2000) examined the spatial distribution of social and economic change in the area affected by the Northwest Forest Plan (72 Oregon, Washington, and northern California counties spanning the Cascade Range) during the 

1990-95 period when federal timber harvests were in sharp decline. The authors 

examined rates of growth in the included counties and compared growth rates with 

respect to size class of county populations, incorporated versus unincorporated 

areas, and population turnover (inmigration and outmigration). In Washington, the 

Puget Sound, Tri-City, and Northern Cascades areas grew the fastest. In Oregon, 

the Portland Metro area and Crook, Deschutes, and Jefferson Counties exhibited 

the fastest growth, with the latter including the Bend-Redmond urban growth area. 

Overall, the authors found that growth rates were relatively constant across incorporated areas within the region, regardless of size, with smaller cities growing 

somewhat more rapidly in Washington. Comparing rates of growth in the incorporated and unincorporated parts of counties in the region, the authors found that in 

13 counties, including those in the Seattle and Portland metropolitan areas, unincorporated areas grew faster than incorporated areas. Although this suggests that in 

the counties composing the outer margins of the region’s urban centers, growth is 

concentrated in rural areas, the authors did not explore implications for expansion 

of the wildland-urban interface.

Figure 1—States with the largest projected increases in population, 1995–2025. (Source: Campbell 1996.)
6

GENERAL TECHNICAL REPORT PNW-GTR-617

Figure 2—States ranked by projected percentage of change in population, 1995–2025. (Source: Campbell 1996.)
7

The Economics of Amenities and Migration in the Pacific Northwest

Christensen et al. (2000) cited USDA Economic Research Service (Bowers and 

Cook 1997) analysis that indicates that nationwide, counties with high federal land 

ownership and retirement destination counties had the highest inmigration rates, 

but the former also had the highest outmigration rates. This suggests that employment instability may characterize fast-growing recreation- and tourism-based economies. Citing data collected by the Internal Revenue Service, the authors examined 

the rate of population turnover in the 72 counties within the region. Between April 

1990 and April 1994, the authors found that of the 36 counties with high inmigration, 27 also had high outmigration, suggesting that an active labor market likely 

caused high employment-driven population turnover. 

A reason commonly cited for high inmigration into the Pacific Northwest is the 

access to outdoor recreational amenities, and in particular, the proximity of large 

areas of public land held by the USDA Forest Service and the USDI Bureau of Land 

Management, as well as large areas of state park and forest land. A few studies 

reviewed below have employed surveys to collect data on motivations of individual 

migrants, but little empirical work had been performed to examine the propensity 

of new migrants to the Pacific Northwest to be drawn to participate in outdoor 

activities. The National Survey of Recreation and the Environment provides some 

insight (Cordell et al. 1997). Figure 3 depicts the average number of annual trips in 

which residents over the age of 16 within Forest Service Pacific Northwest Region 

(Region 6) engaged in a variety of outdoor activities, in comparison with the Nation 

as a whole. The survey did not discern whether the activities actually took place 

on public wildland; however, those listed are selected from the much larger set of 

activities included in the survey, most of which were less clearly associated with 

public wildland. Results suggest that residents of the Pacific Northwest do not have 

a markedly stronger propensity to engage in outdoor recreation generally, relative to the Nation. However, for a few activities most likely concentrated on public 

wildland—hiking, backpacking, off-highway vehicle driving, and to a lesser extent, 

hunting—the Pacific Northwest regional numbers are notably higher than the 

national average. The authors cited found that about half the residents of the Pacific 

and Rocky Mountain regions take part in “outdoor adventure” activities such as 

hiking, backpacking, mountain climbing, rock climbing, and off-highway vehicle 

driving, compared to about a third in other regions of the country. They attributed 

this principally to availability of public land and regional topography rather than 

preferences of immigrants to these regions, although they noted that the results are 

striking and called for further study. 
8

GENERAL TECHNICAL REPORT PNW-GTR-617

Principal Lines of Research

A number of subfields in economics investigate the value of amenity resources and 

their relation to population migration and firms’ location decisions. Apart from economics, social science disciplines such as rural sociology, demography, and others 

approach these issues from different theoretical and methodological perspectives. 

Nearly all published studies cite Rosen (1979) and Roback (1988) as the seminal 

papers identifying locational amenities as critical influences in the migration decisions of both individuals and firms. The following discussion focuses largely on the 

economics literature and draws on other perspectives to a more limited extent. For 

a more thorough review of the broader social science literature pertaining to rural 

population growth and environmental amenities, see McCool and Kruger (2001) 

Figure 3—Average annual recreational activity trips per resident, Pacific Northwest versus national average. OHV = 

off-highway vehicle. Hunting figures are from the national survey of recreation and the environment, which collects 

data separately for big game, small game, and migratory bird hunting, of which the simple average is represented here. 

(Source: Cordell et al. 1997.)
9

The Economics of Amenities and Migration in the Pacific Northwest

and Stewart (2000). The lines drawn in this review between different literatures 

are rather fine and are defined solely for the purpose of structuring this review. As 

such, locating discussion of any given paper in the context of a particular literature 

is somewhat arbitrary.

Migration and Demographic Studies

The demography literature is focused principally on identifying patterns in demographic change spatially and over time. Although the sources identified as relevant 

to this review appeared to be largely atheoretical, a number of sources investigated the correlation of locational amenities with large-scale population movement 

(Campbell 1994, Cromartie and Wardwell 1999). Earlier papers in this literature 

tended to provide comparatively simple analyses of state-to-state migration flows, 

with amenities represented coarsely, e.g., inclusion of a dummy variable for coastline and a variable measuring topographical variability as explanatory variables 

(Cushing 1987). An important development relative to prior studies, greater detail 

in amenity specification has become more common, although it is probably still 

insufficient in later papers. 

Cromartie and Wardwell (1999) examined changing population patterns, 

including both natural growth rates and net migration rates in the nonmetropolitan 

West2 between 1970 and 1997. The authors found that two-thirds of total population growth over this period in nonmetropolitan counties is attributable to inmigration. Migration in the nonmetropolitan West is proportionately higher than in 

nonmetro areas in other regions and has maintained this lead throughout nationwide 

fluctuations over the study period. Owing to the lower population base in the West, 

relative population change has been more volatile than in other regions, although 

patterns through time have followed the same general trends. In looking at patterns 

in more detail, the authors found that more recent trends in net migration are more 

dispersed, such that lower average nonmetro county growth rates for individual 

counties obscure a wider dispersion of inmigration over a greater number of counties than was the case in the 1970s peak in rural inmigration. The authors attribute 

this to a decreased dependence on proximity to urban areas and to a broadening 

of migrants’ search for amenity-rich areas in response to increased cost of living 

and property values in already-developed nonmetro amenity-rich counties. The 

authors forecast a continued high rate of growth in nonmetro counties based on 

2 The authors defined the nonmetro West as comprising 325 of 414 counties within 

the 11 states of the Pacific coast and interior West. U.S. Bureau of the Census-defined 

metropolitan statistical areas are core counties containing cities of 50,000 or more 

people plus adjacent counties integrated with the core through commuting patterns. 

Nonmetro counties are those that are not designated by the bureau as metro.
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GENERAL TECHNICAL REPORT PNW-GTR-617

three trends. First, the rural nonmetro West is largely unpopulated. Growth over 

the last 30 years has focused on the urban/rural interface at the margin of Western metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs) and other smaller urban areas. Several 

counties have transitioned from rural to urban as this margin pushes outward, and 

it is argued that this trend is likely to continue. Second, rural areas of the West are 

distinguished from those of other regions in the increasing youth and higher fertility rate of the resident population. Thus, the natural growth rate of the rural West 

is high, and this area continues to attract young inmigrants. Third, the aging of the 

U.S. population is accelerating, with the first of the baby boom generation reaching 

retirement age in 2006. This population is attracted to rural areas as dependence 

on wage earning falls off and the desire for a natural amenity-rich environment 

increases. Although continued rapid growth is a function of many complex and 

interlinked sociological and economic events, the authors suggested that the capacity of rural areas to assimilate growing populations is likely to be overwhelmed if 

growth occurs at the high end of the range of potential growth.

Johnson and Beale (2002; see also Johnson and Beale 1998) and McGranahan 

(1999) presented a similar picture for the Nation as a whole, and attempted to 

provide more explanation for the principal drivers of migration to rural counties. 

Johnson and Beale (2002) identified “recreation counties,” i.e., those nonmetropolitan counties ranking higher in a weighted index of the recreation-related factors, 

including employment and income for recreation, tourism, and entertainment 

business sectors; percentage of housing units intended for seasonal use; and per 

capita receipts from hotels and motels. Recreational counties were of a variety 

of types including mountain, lake, and coastal resort areas as well as areas with 

casinos and national parks. All identified counties were characterized by high 

natural amenities with the exception of many casino-associated recreation counties. 

The authors noted that the greatest concentrations of recreation counties were 

identified in the Upper Great Lakes and the Northeast, with lesser but significant 

concentrations in the intermountain West and Pacific States (although they do not 

address the fact that Western counties are larger and fewer in number, offsetting 

the Eastern concentration to some degree). Also noting that rural inmigration has 

accelerated since 1990 (Johnson and Beale 1998), the authors found that between 

1990 and 2000, population growth in recreation counties was nearly twice that of 

nonmetro counties (20.2 percent versus 10.4 percent). Most of this growth was due 

to net inmigration, where recreational counties grew at 2.5 times the rate of nonmetro counties generally. 

Overlapping somewhat with Johnson and Beale, McGranahan (1999) developed 

an amenities index for all U.S. counties, aggregating normalized measures of 
11

The Economics of Amenities and Migration in the Pacific Northwest

average January temperature and days of sun, moderation of summer temperature, 

summer humidity, water area, and topographic variation, and uses correlation 

analysis and regression models to assess the effect on migration. The index does not 

encompass any elements of land use or land cover, although forested area and low 

elevation were tested and found to be poor predictors of population change. With 

the exception of winter sun, the Pacific Northwest rated high in all amenity measures. Over both the short and long terms, the amenities indices were better predictors of population change than density of population, economic base, or an index of 

poverty. Noting that rural counties that have focused on attracting retirees or 

recreationists have seen much higher population change rates than other rural 

counties, McGranahan found that natural amenities accounted for a large portion of 

the growth in retirement counties, but much less so in recreation-oriented counties. 

It is suggested that this is likely due to the seasonality of many recreation uses. 

McGranahan also found natural amenities to be more strongly predictive of interregional population change than of intraregional population change (when using the 

four census regions of the United States: Northeast, Midwest, South, and West), 

although they are still strongly associated with the latter. However, population 

density and economic base were more on par with amenities in predicting interregional migration.

Vias (1999) used county-level aggregate data from nonmetro counties in the 

Rocky Mountain region to analyze trends in population and employment from 1970 

to 1995. The author used a regression model3 to identify factors influencing these 

trends, with a focus on natural resource amenity factors (amount of Forest Service 

and Bureau of Land Management land and topographic variation). Two perspectives on the effect of broad-scale economic restructuring on regional growth trends 

are outlined in the paper (see Frey 1993, Frey and Speare 1992, and Troy 1998 for 

further discussion). Both interpret the effect of the shift from a manufacturing- to 

service-based economy. The “regional reconstruction perspective” starts from the 

national-level shift from rustbelt to sunbelt, suggesting that this shift was precipitated by the independence of service firms from manufacturing infrastructure, 

permitting location in lower cost, nonmetro areas. Fundamentally, this suggests 

that employment follows as firms seek low-cost locations. The “deconcentration 

perspective,” in contrast, suggests that firms follow people: personnel, rather than 

capital infrastructure, are the principal resource required by service firms, and 

3 The author described a structural equations model similar to those used in the urban and 

regional economics literature discussed below, although he omitted a technical discussion 

or formal specification of the model, focusing instead on a broader discussion of social science perspectives on regional migration.
12

GENERAL TECHNICAL REPORT PNW-GTR-617

thus determine location. High-quality personnel, preferring to live in amenity-rich 

locations, draw firms into high-amenity nonmetro counties. The authors, although 

failing to provide references to specific research, suggested that recent evidence, 

including the trends among retiree migrants, supports the latter view. The authors’ 

analysis of county-level data for the region is generally supportive of this argument, 

suggesting that, on average, firms tend to follow an amenity-seeking labor pool.

It is notable that, in their discussion, the lower wages observed in amenity-rich 

areas were largely overlooked by Vias et al (1999). The two views discussed above 

become rather coincident when one considers that amenities factor into both the 

utility functions of individuals as well as the production functions of firms. That is, 

individuals are drawn to amenity-rich locations for personal reasons, and firms are 

able to pay less in such locations, thus lowering the costs of production. As such, 

it seems rather more difficult to attribute sole causality to either the “jobs follow 

people” or the “people follow jobs” perspectives. This is discussed further below in 

the context of economic studies of labor force migration.4

Both Crompton et al. (1997) and Johnson and Rasker (1993) surveyed employers to identify the influence and importance of amenities on firms’ siting decisions. 

Johnson and Rasker (1993), who surveyed firms in three rural Montana counties 

adjacent to Yellowstone National Park, found that amenity factors ranked much 

higher than business-related factors in Likert-scale importance ratings. Amenities 

qualitatively identified in the survey included rural nature of location, reputation 

for quality of life, overall community attributes, crime rate, environmental quality, 

scenic beauty, proximity to public land, small-town atmosphere, and general-, summer-, winter- and wildlife-based recreation opportunity. Crompton et al. (1997) surveyed development officials and representatives of private firms with responsibility 

for deciding that their company would locate in Colorado.5 The study used a fairly 

large sample to permit reliably testing the importance of four attributes: (1) origin 

of company (i.e., in-state/out-of-state migrant), (2) company size, (3) whether the 

4 Although Vias et al. (1999) investigated economic factors driving migration of individuals 

and firms, their analysis is distinguished from others in the economics literature because 

they did not use neoclassical producer or consumer theory in any formal sense, although 

both are somewhat implicit in their analysis.

5 In selecting the sample, the authors noted an earlier study in Texas (Decker and Crompton 1993) that attempted to identify attributes of a location used in firms’ siting decisions. 

The Texas study found that open space and parks played a minor role in firms’ decisions to 

locate in towns and cities in that state relative to more traditional attributes such as cost of 

living and primary/secondary education. To address a key flaw of the earlier study, i.e., that 

the sample essentially preselected for firms that would not regard amenities as important, 

Crompton et al. (1997) selected Colorado as the study region. Although the focus was to 

identify key characteristics of firms that placed high importance on recreational and open 

space amenities in (re)locational decisions, this would seem to repeat the same sample 

selection error in reverse, as do Johnson and Rasker (1993).
13

The Economics of Amenities and Migration in the Pacific Northwest

company was “footloose” (i.e., directly tied to any particular input or infrastructure 

other than labor), and (4) whether the firm’s chief executive or owner (re)located 

to the company’s Colorado site. The study also compared views of private firm 

executives with those of economic development officials. Key findings were that 

development officials and private firm executives differed markedly in their views 

on the importance of quality-of-life attributes, particularly with regard to recreation 

amenities. Unlike other firms, small companies, “footloose” companies, and those 

in which the principal decisionmaker relocated with the firm, all regarded qualityof-life generally as more important than other business-related factors, including 

government incentives, and regarded recreational amenities as the most important 

quality-of-life attribute. Citing statistics from a variety of sources that suggest that 

the large majority of job growth throughout the West and elsewhere is within small 

firms, the authors suggested that the importance of quality-of-life attributes indicated in the survey results should be notable to those interested in regional economic 

development. Whereas most factors affecting firms’ revenue streams are market 

driven and only marginally affected by local government policy, recreation/parks/

open space availability, as a direct outcome of government policy, may represent an 

effective incentive mechanism for promoting local job growth.

Given Campbell’s (1994) projection that retirement population will double over 

the period 1993–2030 to 22 percent of the U.S. population, the potential of retiree 

migration is especially significant in amenity-rich areas. Clark et al. (1996) focused 

specifically on migration of retirees and the elderly and provide a broad review of 

the literature of several disciplines related to this topic. The authors were critical 

of most studies, particularly with regard to the use of aggregate age-cohort migration data, which are often aggregated further into a single postretirement cohort. 

This is in contrast to the literatures in gerontology, sociology, and demography, 

all of which take a more heterogeneous view of elderly populations. By using a 

national microlevel data set that identifies migrants’ states of origin and destination, the authors more precisely reflected characteristics of elderly migrants as 

explanatory variables in observed migration. The analysis defined location-specific 

attributes as the difference between attribute level in the destination state and the 

origin state. The focus of the paper is on fiscal instruments that states may use to 

influence elderly migrants, e.g., estate and inheritance taxes, income and property 

tax, and welfare and educational spending. Amenity attributes included a small set 

of climatic and environmental quality amenities—none of which related directly 

to land management. Although the amenities included were highly significant, the 

authors noted that the use of state-level data obscures the effect of location-specific 

amenities, or even regional amenities. The crudeness of the analysis with respect 
14

GENERAL TECHNICAL REPORT PNW-GTR-617

to natural amenities renders empirical results of little use for land and resource 

decisions; however, the methods used do suggest directions for future research. 

Given the current and potential significance of retirement migration for the Pacific 

Northwest, the richer analysis of personal characteristics and the destination and 

origin migration data used in this analysis could be combined with a richer amenity 

description to better forecast retirement migration into the Pacific Northwest and its 

subregions. The analysis could be further improved through the use of county-level 

or finer spatial scale.

Judson et al. (1999) reported the results of a large-sample phone survey of 

Oregon immigrants segmented into 15 subregional strata. The authors were primarily interested in investigating the relative influence of income and amenities in 

migrants’ attitudes and motivations regarding locational decisions. The study included a survey of migrants to Western rural counties to investigate the influence of 

amenities on migration decisions, with particular attention to retirees. The analysis 

identified a key relationship between the age/life-cycle class of the respondent and 

the location within Oregon to which they moved, and correspondingly, the types of 

wage and nonwage benefits to which they were attracted. The authors discussed the 

implications for rural economic development of inmigrant profiles and motivations, 

and suggested that luring retiree migrants can be an effective economic development strategy for high-amenity rural communities. The study found that nearly all 

retiree migrants cited amenities as a reason for moving and on average experienced 

an income loss of $3,000 per year as a result of the move. Wage migrants were 

found to be younger, better educated, and less likely to cite amenities as the sole 

reason for moving. Late-career migrants more often than average cited amenities 

as the motivation for moving, and were found to experience annual income losses 

from $4,000 to $10,000. This suggests that late-career migrants may have relocated 

in preparation for retirement (Stewart 2003).

The studies reviewed above provide considerable empirical support for the 

popular notion that natural resource amenities are a significant driver of inmigration in the Pacific Northwest. As noted by Cromartie and Wardwell (1999), population growth in the West over the last 30 years has been most rapid in the urbanrural interface at the margin of urban areas. An observed propensity of migrants 

to locate in high-amenity areas as well as affirmation of the importance of qualityof-life elements in relocation decisions of both individuals and firms emerge from 

the demographics literature, which includes both targeted surveys and census and 

other secondary data sources. Particularly notable in this literature is the focus 

of several studies on trends in migration among the elderly. Clark et al. (1996) 

and Cromartie and Wardwell (1999) in particular provided important insights 

Given the impending 

spike in retirements 

as the baby boom 

generation reaches 

retirement age, a 

careful analysis of 

changing demands 

will help land 

managers understand 

and address these 

demands.
15

The Economics of Amenities and Migration in the Pacific Northwest

and suggested methods for analysis that would provide greater ability to forecast 

retirement population growth in the nonmetropolitan areas of the Northwest. Given 

the impending spike in retirements as the baby boom generation reaches retirement 

age, a careful analysis of the changing demands likely to be placed upon public 

lands as the age distribution of local population undergoes significant changes will 

help public land managers understand and address these demands. 

Urban and Regional Economics and Nonmarket Valuation

Two distinct literatures within the field of economics address the role of amenities 

in markets for labor and housing, respectively. A major thread in the urban and 

regional economics literature studies the dynamics of interregional labor markets 

and equilibrium processes. The focus in this area of research is on the labor market 

itself, and amenity values tend to be a secondary concern, although some studies 

place considerable emphasis on the articulation of amenity measures included in 

analytical models. As these studies generally analyze interregional migration, broad 

regional amenities such as climatic variables are specified as control variables along 

with wage rates and housing costs in econometric models of employment and population. In contrast, within the nonmarket valuation literature, hedonic price analysis 

is employed with the specific focus on estimating shadow prices and demand curves 

for unpriced environmental amenities, often on a site-specific basis. Analysis of 

population migration, if it enters these studies at all, is of secondary concern. The 

literatures are related in the sense that both include specification of amenity measures as control variables in regression models of observable economic behavior. 

The following section reviews these separate literatures, along with a variety of 

other studies that employ similar economic models to investigate related behavior.

Amenities and labor markets—

The broad objective of these studies is the investigation of interregional labor 

migration and the forces, such as wage-rate and cost-of-living differentials, that 

contribute to population flows. As mainstream economic theory suggests, wages 

and other forms of economic compensation will tend to adjust in order to equilibrate the net flow of migrants from one region to another, assuming no difference 

in amenity levels, housing and other living costs, and other economic forces. Thus, 

where net labor migration rates are nonzero, labor markets are said to be in disequilibrium. Where a disequilibrium force arises, such as a change in the level of 

regional amenities or disamenities, or a broad change in tastes and preferences with 

increasing mobility, income, and educational levels, net migration to a given region 

may change, causing regional wage rates and housing prices, in theory, to adjust. 

Through this adjustment process, supply and demand in the interregional labor 
16

GENERAL TECHNICAL REPORT PNW-GTR-617

market is brought to equilibrium. A substantial literature has developed to investigate this hypothesis and to explain situations where labor market disequilibrium 

persists over an extended period. Within this literature, an increasingly sophisticated structural equations approach has developed to model endogenous change in 

employment and population levels, and to a lesser extent, income levels. Although 

recognition of the role of regional amenities is standard in this literature, the focus 

is generally not on amenities themselves, which are commonly represented by a 

quality-of-life index representing regional amenity differences in the analytical 

models. The focus of the following review of this literature is on the evolution of 

these models (particularly with respect to the representation of amenities) and highlights those studies that have emphasized the role of natural resource amenities in 

migration decisions of individuals and firms. 

Rosen (1979) is generally credited as the first published evidence that regional 

amenities are reflected in wage-rate differences between regions. This and other 

early studies (Graves 1976, Graves 1979, Graves 1980, Graves 1983, Graves and 

Knapp 1985, Graves and Linneman 1979, Greenwood et al. 1986, Linneman and 

Graves 1983) tended to focus exclusively on either wage or housing price differentials by using models essentially identical to those employed in the hedonic housing 

price models discussed in the next section. Carlino and Mills (1987), in contrast, 

while representing amenities only very coarsely, established the formal framework 

of simultaneous equations representing employment and population growth underlying most subsequent analyses. Shields and Shields (1989) provided a useful 

review of this earlier literature. Subsequent to Carlino and Mills, most eonometric 

studies modeled wages and rents as independent variables, focusing more directly 

on measures of migration, principally changes in regional population and employment, as dependent variables. Only quite recently has wage rate been broken out 

again as an additional endogenous variable in the structural equations approach 

initiated by Carlino and Mills (see discussion of Deller et al. 2001 below). 

Roback (1982), Hoehn et al. (1987), and Graves and Waldman (1991) tested the 

hypothesis that amenity prices are reflected in both interregional wage and housing cost differentials. Roback explicitly integrated the literature on amenity influence on intracity housing price differentials with the effect of amenities on regional 

wage-rate differentials in a general equilibrium framework. Roback also noted the 

role of amenities as potentially entering directly into firms’ production functions 

in addition to their role as quality-of-life factors. Amenity factors included in the 

analysis, which the author suggested largely explain regional wage-rate differentials, include urban amenities (notably, population change between 1960 and 1970, 

which was found to be a disamenity), and pollution and climate variables, but not 
17

The Economics of Amenities and Migration in the Pacific Northwest

open space or public land variables. Empirical results indicated that the effect of 

amenities on regional rents was unambiguously positive, whereas their effect on 

wage rates depended on whether the (dis)amenity could enter into firms’ production functions (e.g., crime rate or annual snowfall), or in a broad context would be 

considered purely a consumption amenity (e.g., particulate pollution or average 

annual clear days). As in Rosen (1979), results were used to compute quality-of-life 

rankings, circa 1973, for metropolitan regions. The top three are in California; the 

Seattle-Everett metropolitan area, ranking 19th, is the only Northwest area to appear 

in the top 20. In a recent update of Roback (1982), Gabriel et al. (2003) augmented 

previous studies by employing a longitudinal panel data set to permit analysis of 

evolution in quality-of-life ratings over time as well as comparisons across states. 

As in Rosen, the authors included a state-level nonhousing cost-of-living index 

(American Chamber of Commerce 1995); however, owing to limited availability of 

suitable panel data, analysis was restricted to state-level aggregates. Recreational 

amenities were included in the analysis, with comparatively high estimated values for access to inland waterways, proportion of land in federal ownership, and 

access to state and national parks. In contrast to Roback’s results, California and 

Washington came out quite low in both the 1981 and 1990 rankings, at 42 and 41 in 

1990, respectively, and Oregon ranked comparatively high at 22. South Dakota was 

ranked first in quality of life as of 1981, switching with Wyoming for second place 

as of 1990.6

By using microlevel census data and broad measures of regional amenities, 

including climatic variables, environmental quality, and government services levels, 

Hoehn et al. (1987) provided further evidence of the multimarket nature of amenity 

compensation, although they did not include nonhousing costs of living. Again, the 

authors did not address amenities directly affected by public or private land management, including only climatic (e.g., humidity, precipitation), urban (teacher-pupil 

ratio, crime rate) and environmental (e.g., numbers of water pollution dischargers 

and landfills in county) amenities, although the latter are clearly affected by regulatory policy from local to national scales. Controlling for amenity compensation 

in both housing and wage rates, the authors found that households on average give 

up $297 (1980 dollars) per year in wages and housing cost to gain an additional 

3.5 days of sunshine, and $468 per year to live in a county adjacent to a coastline. 

Mathur and Stein (1991) further developed the structural model by integrating the 

amenity valuation literature in the Rosen vein with migration theory. The principal 

aim was to incorporate regional amenities as endogenous variables, recognizing 

6 Although this particular finding would seem to call for explanation, Gabriel et al. (2003) 

fail to provide any further discussion.
18

GENERAL TECHNICAL REPORT PNW-GTR-617

that factors such as congestion and air quality are a function of population density. 

Although the authors focused principally on interregional migration and urban 

amenities, the principle developed in the paper is equally important in investigating the amenity-migration relationship in nonmetropolitan areas. It is interesting 

that, whereas the endogeneity of the “jobs-follow-people-follow-jobs” relationship has been widely recognized in the subsequent literature, the endogeneity of 

population-related amenities in migration models has been largely ignored with the 

exception of Mathur and Stein. The incremental effect of population increases on 

interregional or intermetropolitan area migration on regional amenities is likely to 

be rather small. However, population change is likely to have a much greater effect 

proportionately on amenities in the wildland-urban interface or rural communities 

where development has been focused in the Pacific Northwest and other amenityrich areas of the West.

Greenwood and Hunt (1989) initiated a debate over whether shifts in labor 

demand or shifts in labor supply were the dominant cause in interregional migration, i.e., whether migration is induced by labor demand, or whether firms follow 

the pool of labor supply that is drawn to locations with high-amenity values and 

other priced and nonpriced attractions besides jobs, per se. Greenwood and Hunt attempted to refute the findings of Graves (1980), arguing that the latter’s findings on 

the importance of regional amenities in explaining regional migration trends are attributable to a specification error. Rather, Greenwood and Hunt argue that amenities 

become much less significant predictors of regional inmigration when a generalized 

equilibrium framework is applied that includes endogenous models of employment 

growth and population change. Although the empirical results support this contention, the authors allowed that the degree to which the value of amenities is capitalized into wages and rents will obscure the direct effect of amenities on migration, 

and that employment growth can itself be attributable, in part, to the attraction of 

firms to high-amenity locations with lower wage rates. In response, Mueser and 

Graves (1995) argued that capitalization of amenity values and their effect on firm 

behavior are fundamental, suggesting that Greenwood and Hunt’s failure to address 

these effects in the statistical model of migration renders their results meaningless. 

Further, the authors argued, local wages and employment growth are endogenous 

with migration and cannot be used as proxies for employment opportunity. In addition, regional land rents, not included in Greenwood’s model, are a critical disequilibrium force driving migration. Meuser and Graves noted, however, that regional 

land rents and wages are extremely difficult to measure, as they are disequilibrium 

forces and are subject to change over time. Changes in both are obscured by confounding changes in, e.g., housing quality and employment conditions other than 
19

The Economics of Amenities and Migration in the Pacific Northwest

nominal wage rates (also see Dumond et al. 1999 and Gabriel and Rosenthal 1999 

for further discussion of this point). 

By using proxy measures that are less subject to confounding effects, coupled 

with a more rigorous theoretical model, Meuser and Graves (1995) produced a more 

definitive test of the relative influence of employment versus amenity factors on 

migration over the period 1950–80. The authors concluded that in each of three decades, climate-related amenity factors, taken as a group, had a greater influence on 

regional inmigration than the employment factors, as a group. Ultimately, the study 

concluded that regional employment effects tend to be episodic, occurring in different places over time. As such, the long-term effects of employment-related factors 

on migration are more muted than short-term analysis would indicate. In contrast, 

natural amenities are more constant over time, but trends in the tastes of migrants, 

increasing income and retirement rates, and technological changes all render amenities an increasingly dominant factor in regional migration.

As noted above, the general approach of this literature is relatively abstract, 

intended to test hypotheses regarding the influence of equilibrium and disequilibrium influences on labor migration. Relatively few of these studies have attempted 

to isolate empirical measures of amenity values. At the regional scale at which these 

studies are generally conducted, individual amenities are difficult to identify. For 

example, Blomquist et al. (1988) focused on evaluating amenity characteristics of 

all urban counties in the United States, indexing a number of amenities into a 

quality-of-life index calculated for each county. Implicit economic values for the 

indexed amenity quality of each county were estimated. Environmental amenities, 

including climatic variables and proximity to coastline, were combined with 

cultural amenities and urban disamenities (e.g., crime, pollution). With a rank of 

35 out of 235 and an average annual quality-of-life premium of $884 per resident, 

Lane County in Oregon was the only Northwest county identified in the top 100 

U.S. counties.

Clark and Cosgrove (1991) developed a dual model of the tradeoff between 

both distance of relocation and wage with a set of cost-of-living and quality-of-life 

variables. Optimal distance to move is modeled as a function of wage gain, housing 

costs, personal characteristics, and the differential in a variety of amenity characteristics between the original location and the new location choice of the migrant.7

The wage model quantifies the tradeoff between wages and amenities in the labor 

market for different households. The authors stressed that it is necessary to control 

7 The authors used the 1980 U.S. Census Public-Use Microdata Samples (U.S. 

Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census 1983), which provides detailed 

information on individuals and households.
20

GENERAL TECHNICAL REPORT PNW-GTR-617

for a wide variety of amenities to isolate regional wage differences that represent 

disequilibrium variation rather than compensation for amenity differentials. Amenities relevant to natural resource managers were two variables intended to proxy 

for outdoor recreational opportunity: distance to coast and quality of warm weather 

fishing (from the National Survey of Fishing, Hunting and Wildlife-Associated 

Recreation (U.S. Department of the Interior, Fish and Wildlife Service 1982), although several other cultural and environmental amenities were included. Interestingly, although both recreational amenities were significant and had positive coefficients in the wage model, coefficients on both variables were negative in the optimal 

distance model. Interpretation suggested that in the former case, desire to move 

nearer to a coastline was strongest among those already relatively close, i.e., those 

living in the interior of the country were less likely to be attracted to the coast. In 

the case of fishing quality, the authors suggested (somewhat cryptically) that the 

amenity may act as a proxy for rural destinations. Presumably, in seeking better 

fishing, a migrant need only move to more rural surroundings and not cross country. Although in principle the results regarding the effect of improved fishing could 

be used to predict how management improving recreational fisheries might affect 

inmigration, it is likely that this variable is only a very coarse measure of recreation 

opportunity and may proxy for a variety of unspecified amenities. The broader conclusion of the study suggests that, as indicated in many other studies, amenities are 

roughly on par with wage-gain opportunities in driving migration decisions. 

Deller et al. (2001) extended the two-equation Carlino-Mills model of population and employment to explicitly capture the endogeneity of wage rates, thus 

adding a third dimension to the “jobs follow people—people follow jobs” debate. 

More explicitly capturing the role of income in regional growth models by using data for 2,243 U.S. counties, the authors addressed the issue of job quality in 

increasingly service-oriented rural economies. Hypothesizing that amenity characteristics are central to economic growth, particularly in rural areas, the authors 

also focused much more specifically on amenities, criticizing earlier research for 

simplistic, ad hoc representation of regional amenities. Principal component analysis was used to identify scalar indices that condense 53 amenity variables into 5 

general amenity and quality-of-life attributes: climate, land, water, winter recreation, and developed recreational infrastructure. The land index represents amount 

of federal wilderness areas, forest land, farm land, and state park land.8 The index 

differentiated Western States high in public forest, mountainous terrain, national 

8 The USDA Forest Service Wilderness Assessment Unit at the Southern Research Station 

provided the National Outdoor Recreation Supply Information System data set containing 

most of the amenity variables used in the analysis.
21

The Economics of Amenities and Migration in the Pacific Northwest

parks, and wilderness areas from other states. Both the water and winter recreation 

indices differentiated areas with high levels of developed recreation opportunity 

from those with undeveloped aquatic and winter natural amenities.

Deller et al. (2001) identified several notable patterns in their empirical results 

with respect to amenity variables. Both the water and climate indices were positively associated with population and income growth, but no significant influence 

on employment growth was detected, which the authors suggested is a result of 

the high rate of retirement migration in areas ranking high in these indices. The 

positive association of population and employment growth with the land amenities 

index is attributed by the authors to growth of tourist economies around public land 

resources and mountainous areas. Of particular note is the finding that no amenity 

index was negatively associated with income growth. With the clear implication 

that high-amenity rural counties have the potential to promote economic development by emphasis on those resources over more traditional resource extraction, the 

paper also advanced the literature by describing amenities in greater detail than 

previous studies. This greater conceptual detail is impeded somewhat, however, 

by the use of county-level data that obscure the influence of spatial effects across 

county lines (although it is a marked improvement over state-level data or data 

focusing on census metropolitan areas), suggesting a direction for future research 

with improved spatial data.

Retirement migration—

Relatively few papers in the economics literature have focused on the effects of 

amenities on retirement migration specifically. Emphasizing the point that amenities differentials are compensated for in both wages and rents, Graves and Waldman 

(1991) examined retirees who are no longer dependent on wages, representing a 

polar example of migration not driven by wages. The authors hypothesized that 

retirees are attracted to amenity-rich areas where the economic value of locational 

amenities is expressed as lower wage rates rather than higher rents. By using data 

and results of wage and rent response to amenities obtained from an earlier paper of 

similar focus (Blomquist et al. 1988), the authors tested the hypothesis that in counties characterized by wage-compensated amenities, inmigration is higher among 

the elderly (65 and older) than among the 25 to 54 age group. The empirical results 

support this hypothesis and indicate that the elderly population is highly sensitive to 

the degree to which amenities in a given county are rent-compensated. Although the 

aggregate nature of the data used by Graves and Waldman (1991) renders the results 

only generally applicable to migration in the Northwest, the authors identified several theoretical and policy implications that may be relevant. First, regional modeling of retirement inmigration must account for the relative degree of wage- versus 
22

GENERAL TECHNICAL REPORT PNW-GTR-617

rent-compensation of regional amenity values. The same is true of hedonic nonmarket valuation studies that solely focus on rent differentials to value natural resource 

amenities. More broadly, the authors pointed out that both population groups and 

firms that differ from the dominant economic groups in a given area with respect to 

their sensitivity to land rents and wages are attracted by potential utility/profit gains 

resulting from their position relative to the market. An assumption used in testing 

this hypothesis was that retirement immigration is not a sufficiently large proportion 

of the population to cause upward pressure on housing costs. In certain locations 

in the Northwest, however, this assumption may not be valid. A potential extension 

of this research would identify the responsiveness of wage and rent compensation 

to the growth rate and proportion of county elderly populations relative to younger 

populations. The analysis also suggests that labor-intensive firms will be attracted 

to locations where amenities are largely wage-compensated rather than rent-compensated. Thus, development of regional amenities is likely to attract labor-intensive 

rather than land- and capital infrastructure-intensive firms.

Building on Graves and Knapp (1988) and others (Graves and Waldman 1991), 

von Reichert and Rudzitis (1994) defined a model to test the relative role of rent and 

wages on the destination choice of migrants in and out of the labor force by using 

new data and an alternative quantitative method. Whereas previous studies used 

general census data, von Reichart and Rudzitis used microlevel survey data gathered in nonmetropolitan, high-amenity counties. The analysis found no significant 

difference between non-labor-force and labor-force migrants in the response to 

housing prices, but a significant and large attraction of low-wage areas for nonlabor-force migrants. The effect is particularly strong among migrants from metropolitan counties.

Firm location decisions—

The body of research reviewed in this section is oriented within the context of urban and regional economics and economic geography and attempts to explain the 

fundamentals of location decisions and the evolution of geographic concentrations 

of economic activity (see Fujita et al. 1999 for an extended treatment). This broad 

literature lies beyond the bounds of this review. A number of papers, however, 

have focused on the influence of amenity resources on locational decisions of firms 

(Brueckner et al. 1996, Gottlieb 1995, Granger and Blomquist 1999, Luger 1996, 

Zhang 1997). Kohler (1997) provided a review of this literature and performed a 

hedonic analysis of amenity effects on industrial location. By using a more elaborately stated model of firms’ behavior than those used in earlier studies, the author 

investigated much the same phenomena as Vias (1999), Graves (1983), Greenwood 

et al. (1986), and Greenwood and Hunt (1989), and concluded that a more careful 
23

The Economics of Amenities and Migration in the Pacific Northwest

mapping of the economic geography of firm location explains discrepancies found 

in these analyses. The author suggested that there is a relationship between the 

degree of dependence on skilled labor of a firm and the distance from highdisamenity locations where it will locate. Although the author’s conclusions do not 

bear directly on public land management, they do suggest several theoretical points 

relevant to analyzing and projecting commercial and industrial development on 

the urban periphery. One example is that certain classes of industry and labor, i.e., 

mobile firms and highly skilled workers, have ample incentive to locate in highamenity areas. More broadly, the relative sophistication of this literature provides 

a benchmark for rigor that other research with more direct bearing can strive for in 

the future.

Forest preservation and wilderness designation amenity effects—

In two recent studies, economists looked beyond the simple effects of public land 

open space to address the effect of public land management on migration in the 

context of the generalized equilibrium models reviewed above. Duffy-Deno (1998) 

provided a relatively sophisticated analysis of the effect of wilderness designation on 

county-level population and employment growth. The author used the Carlino-Mills 

disequilibrium adjustment model of employment and population density on data 

from 250 nonurban counties in the intermountain West. The study extended the 

literature by analyzing the effect of the area of designated wilderness (as of 1990) on 

1990 values of population and employment change. The author tested for differential 

effects of wilderness in resource-dependent communities broadly and more narrowly in timber-based communities, as well as differential effects of USDI Bureau of 

Land Management and USDA Forest Service wilderness areas. The effect of wilderness on resource- and nonresource-based employment was also analyzed. Empirical 

findings indicate most robustly that there is no evidence that wilderness designation 

has any negative effect on per capita employment rates, even in counties where 30 

percent or more of the employment base is composed of timber-related jobs. Beyond 

this conclusion, the empirical evidence is rather more ambiguous, finding a weak 

positive relationship between wilderness designation and population and employment densities. The author also noted that land designated as wilderness in the past 

tended to be of low productivity, whereas future designations may focus on more 

productive land and result in greater impacts on extractive industry. Although the 

study attempted to control for the potential that migrants respond generally to public 

land amenities by including nonwilderness public land, the author suggested that 

future research should disaggregate the attributes of public land, e.g., by focusing on 

the amount of roadless areas or a more precise measure of attributes of wilderness 

than on management by the Forest Service or Bureau of Land Management.
24

GENERAL TECHNICAL REPORT PNW-GTR-617

Lewis et al. (2002) tested a structural model of the effect of public forest conservation land (preservation and multiple-use forest land) on employment growth 

and net migration in the northern forest region, comprising 92 nonmetro counties in 

the Northeast and Lake States. Forest products is the dominant resource-based industry in the region and accounts for up to 70 percent of total employment in some 

counties. In two extensions to the basic model, the authors (1) tested the differential 

effect of preservation land (i.e., forest preserve and national parks) and multiple-use 

forest land (National Forest System land not designated wilderness or other preservation status) and (2) tested for initial effects of conservation changes as public 

land harvest rates declined more steeply in the Northeast than in Lake states over 

the period 1990-97. The second extension was intended to differentiate the effect of 

changes in public land use designation from the long-term existence of conservation 

lands that were established in the early to mid 1900s. Empirical findings in testing 

the basic structural model indicate that the proportion of county in conservation 

land had no significant direct impact on employment growth (in contrast to DuffyDeno’s [1998] results), but that the reduced-form (i.e., summed direct and indirect) 

effect on net migration was significant, with a 9-percent increase in multiple-use 

conservation land corresponding to a 1-percent increase in the net migration rate.9

In the first extension to the basic model, preservation lands had no significant effect 

on either employment growth or net migration. In contrast, multiple-use conservation land had a significant positive effect on net migration. In a second extension, 

the authors investigated the differential effects of state and national forest multipleuse land and change in national forest harvest levels on employment growth and net 

migration. Again, no significant effects on employment growth are indicated, but 

positive direct and reduced-form effects of both state and national forest land on net 

migration are detected, with no significant effect attributable to harvest level.

Generally, Lewis et al. (2002) indicated that effects of public land amenity 

values on net migration are principally produced by multiple-use lands, which the 

authors explained by noting that relatively little commercial activity is generated 

locally by wilderness areas, which tend to offer remote, multiday experiences. In 

contrast, the greater vehicular access to multiple-use areas may generate more day 

use activity, contributing to an attraction to inmigration. Consistent with other 

studies on the employment impact of changing harvest levels in other regions of 

the United States, the authors also found that no net change in employment growth 

could be attributed to changing harvest levels between 1990 and 1997, although 

9 Lewis et al. (2002) findings are consistent with research demonstrating that in both 

Montana (Daniels et al. 1991) and Oregon (Burton and Berck 1996), neither national forest 

harvest nor sales levels have a significant effect on employment in the forestry sector.

Relatively little 

commercial activity 

is generated locally 

by wilderness areas, 

which tend to offer 

remote, multiday 

experiences. In 

contrast, the greater 

vehicular access to 

multiple-use areas 

may generate more 

day use activity, 

contributing to 

an attraction to 

inmigration.
25

The Economics of Amenities and Migration in the Pacific Northwest

they note that sectoral changes may have occurred and were unobserved in the 

available data. Although positive, the effects of national forest land on employment and migration tended to be fairly small, with an 8-percent increase in state 

or federal multiple-use land producing a 1-percent increase in net migration, and a 

4-percent increase in federal forest land producing a 1-percent increase in the rate 

of employment growth. Thus, they suggested that although designation of conservation land may be desirable for a number of different reasons, it should not be 

regarded as a particularly potent tool for economic development.

Nonmarket valuation: hedonic housing price studies—

The nonmarket valuation literature is vast, covering a particularly active area of 

research within the resource and environmental economics subdiscipline. As noted 

above, the focus of this literature is development of credible estimates of consumer 

and producer surplus values of environmental amenities. Often, this is motivated 

by the need for benefits measures to integrate into environmental policy decisions 

via benefit-cost analyses or for damage estimates in legal proceedings. There are a 

variety of techniques used by economists to estimate these values. Nonmarket 

valuation by the hedonic price analysis method takes advantage of the availability 

of observable market behavior from which implicit values of amenity resources can 

be deduced (see Freeman 1993 for formal details).10 Most often, this is done by 

observing housing price and amenity-level differentials within relatively localized 

study areas and by using regression models to isolate the values attributable to 

specific amenity characteristics (Boyle and Taylor 2001, Din et al. 2001, Earnhart 

2001, Graves and Knapp 1985, Johnston et al. 2001, Orford 2000, Pendleton and 

Mendelsohn 2000, van Ommeren et al. 2000, Wilhelmsson 2000). This relies on 

the assumption that housing markets analyzed are in equilibrium, i.e., supply and 

demand are stable, and that cross-sectional fluctuations in price can be attributed 

to variation in qualities of properties sold, including amenity qualities. Hedonic 

price analysis and other similar techniques also are used extensively to estimate the 

value of recreational amenities (Bowes and Krutilla 1989, Buschena et al. 2001, 

Englin and Mendelsohn 1991, Le Goffe 2000). As the empirical focus of this body 

of research is on estimation of the economic value of specific amenities, very rarely 

is the effect on population migration considered. As such, an extensive review of 

this literature is beyond the scope of this paper. However, a substantial body of 

10 Because these studies use observable market behavior as indirect indicators of the 

value of nonpriced goods, they and other similar techniques are known as revealed 

preference methods, in contrast to stated preference methods, which depend on survey 

techniques that measure response to hypothetical scenarios where no observable market 

behavior is available. For an extensive bibliography of stated preference studies, see 

Cameron (1999, 2001).
26

GENERAL TECHNICAL REPORT PNW-GTR-617

research has focused on measuring the value of natural amenities, of which a 

relatively few studies have focused on the value of forest and other open space 

amenities on residential housing markets (Bates and Santerre 2001, Geoghegan 

2002, Irwin and Bockstael 2001). Given the implications for land use change in the 

urban periphery, this vein in the literature seems particularly relevant to this review. 

Geoghegan et al. (1997) reported a study that used detailed geospatial data by 

means of a geographic information system (GIS) coupled with ecological indices 

of fragmentation and diversity of land use as regressors. The study found that in 

the context of urban and dense suburban housing, diversity and fragmentation are 

desirable and increase home sale prices. The authors interpreted this as the value of 

walkable access to retail and other services, schools, and undeveloped open space. 

In a more rural context, however, the authors found that diversity and fragmentation are undesirable and represent the intrusion of conflicting land uses into rural 

residential land uses, or intrusion of residential use into more traditional rural land 

uses. Acharya and Bennett (2001) assessed the performance of these indices relative 

to more traditional approaches that used proximity to crude, discrete land use classifications, finding improved model performance with the former. Use of ecological indices in modeling home sale prices is appealing, but it is unclear why these 

studies use indices of diversity and fragmentation rather than indexing proximity to 

and pattern of specific land uses. That is, both studies are critical of coarse classification schemes that collapse multidimensional information into a single variable, 

e.g., urban/suburban/rural, but fail to exploit the ability of GIS tools to produce 

improved classifications that would offer better resolution of spatial information. As 

a simple example, it would be useful to test whether there is a distinction between 

agricultural and forest land use in their influence on residential land values. Also, 

the authors were concerned with measuring the value of near-neighborhood land 

use heterogeneity, and thus did not address the effect of open space amenities at a 

larger spatial scale. 

Lutzenhiser and Netusil (2001) presented an analysis of a variety of open space 

types on effects on home sale prices. Using Portland, Oregon, as the study site, and 

techniques similar to those in Geoghegan et al. (1997) and Acharya and Bennett 

(2001), the study found proximity to natural area parks (more than 50 percent of the 

park in natural/native vegetation) to have the greatest effect on property values. Urban parks and golf courses and other specialty parks also were included in the analysis and were shown to have weaker influence on property values overall, although 

they required less allocation of land to park for an equivalent increase in nearneighbor home values. Although this analysis offers improved resolution of the 

types of open space that may have differential amenity values, additional case 
27

The Economics of Amenities and Migration in the Pacific Northwest

studies and a broader statistical sample are required to provide more generalizable 

results. An extension using similar techniques that includes the effect of National 

Forest System land would improve the potential application to public land management.

Irwin and Bockstael (2001) were concerned with econometric specifications 

that will permit identification of open space effects on property values, and used 

data from a four-county area of Maryland encompassing both suburban and rural 

residential properties. Citing an earlier literature that is largely inconclusive on 

the nature of amenity effects on property values, the authors pointed out that these 

studies were hampered by econometric problems associated with spatial data, for 

which statistical tools have only relatively recently become available (see Anselin 

and Florax 1995 for an extended treatment). The authors integrated an instrumental 

variables (IV) and simultaneous equations econometric framework and compared 

results to those of a more standard ordinary least squares (OLS) model. In addition 

to other explanatory variables, the authors included separate terms for privately 

owned developable open space, private open space protected from development by 

covenant, and publicly owned open space. The study found that the OLS specification produces a downward bias on the estimated coefficient for open space effects 

on residential property values, even to the point of reversing the sign. This strongly 

suggests that future analyses of similar problems should account for spatial effects. 

In a study of housing price effects of permanent and developable open space in 

a suburban county encompassed in the data set used by Irwin and Bockstael (2001), 

Geoghegan (2002) presented model results indicating that a 1-percent increment of 

permanent open space within a 1-mile (1600-meter) buffer around a given property 

had an effect on sale price on par with an additional square foot (0.09 square meter) 

of floor space. Developable open space did not appear as a significant influence on 

sale price.

Tyrvainen and Miettinen (2000) and Kim and Johnson (2002) focused specifically on the effect of forest land on urban/suburban property values. In a study of 

home sales in Finland, Tyrvainen found that a 1-kilometer decrease in distance 

from forest land results in a 5.9-percent increase in market price, and a forest view 

increases price by nearly 5 percent. In perhaps the most relevant hedonic study for 

forest managers published to date, Kim and Johnson (2002) analyzed the effect of 

forest management in the viewshed of private homes on sale prices. Apart from a 

handful of studies analyzing the influence of designated wilderness areas on economic development, Kim and Johnson presented the only study published to date 

that addresses the amenity effects of forest management beyond ownership or land 

use classification. By using sales data from homes near a university research forest 
28

GENERAL TECHNICAL REPORT PNW-GTR-617

in western Oregon, the authors analyzed the effect of both proximity to the forest boundary as well as stand characteristics (i.e., age class and hardwood/conifer 

mix) and the visibility of clearcut harvest areas. Results from the study of the effect 

of proximity of forest land on home sale prices are consistent with those found in 

Irwin and Bockstael (2001). The authors also found that higher property prices are 

associated with conifer stands and shelterwood stands with taller trees. Agricultural 

pasture and industrially managed forest stands, as well as visible clearcuts up to 11 

years old are associated with lower prices.

Although it is uncommon to lump the urban and regional economics literature 

on migration with the nonmarket valuation literature that uses hedonic methods to 

value housing amenities, the above discussion is intended to reveal the association 

between the two. In one sense, the distinction is a matter of scale: the migration 

literature focuses on large-scale, interregional shifts in population and the influence 

of amenities of similar scale, whereas the hedonic property method analyzes the 

effect of amenities on a much finer, typically neighborhood scale. The theoretical 

distinction, however, is more than simply a matter of scale and has to do with the 

nature of market equilibrium. To estimate the value of amenities based on property 

transactions, the hedonic method relies on the assumption that a given housing market is in equilibrium, i.e., that both the demand and supply curves are static and the 

price differential between one property and another can be attributed to the value 

of characteristics of those properties and not on shifting demand or supply curves. 

Indeed, because migration results in shifting aggregate demand, hedonic studies 

typically control for its effect by limiting the time scale of the sample of property 

transactions used.11 In the economics literature on migration, in contrast, the principal focus is on net population change, which is itself a disequilibrium process, and 

the objective of these studies is to investigate why interregional labor markets are 

not in equilibrium. A hypothesis that has generally been supported by research results is that changes in income, mobility, and tastes (disequilibrium factors) have resulted in net migration to amenity-rich areas. On the spatial scale at which hedonic 

housing price studies tend to focus, however, the migration dynamic plays out as 

land use change, residential conversion, and the disequilibrium process of shifting 

residential supply. Although theoretical and informational complexity of merging 

these two literatures is significant, the integration would greatly aid in the study of 

land use change. As noted in the next section, the approaches taken in the land use 

change literature are generally quite different than that proposed in this discussion. 

11 Riddel (2000, 2001) provided unique application of techniques to control for the dynamic 

factors of growth in amenity qualities and residential demand, respectively. 
29

The Economics of Amenities and Migration in the Pacific Northwest

Land Use Change

As in other areas of economic research, the emergence of tools for collecting and 

managing spatial information has significantly aided and expanded research of the 

economic forces driving changes in land use, particularly from agricultural and forest land to urban and residential uses. A number of studies are focused principally 

on forecasting changes in land base in forest and agriculture at county to regional 

scales (Ahn et al. 2000). The area-base models applied in many of these studies 

use physiogeographic features combined with socioeconomic (including market) 

variables to predict the proportion of land in distinct use classes over time, typically 

assuming that land use conversion occurs as present value of land in commodity 

production drops below its value in urban uses. These models have become increasingly spatially explicit as physiogeographic data have become available; however, 

the limited availability of spatially referenced socioeconomic data, particularly in 

time series, has limited these studies to relatively coarse spatial scales. 

Ahn et al. (2000) found significant improvements in forecast accuracy of forest 

land base with control for cross-sectional variation in land quality and other spatial variables, particularly if time horizons are short, and suggested, as have many 

other authors, (see e.g., Bockstael 1996 and Kline et al. 2001 ), that incorporation of 

socioeconomic variables will provide similar improvements. The same likely holds 

true for significant changes in residential conversion, although residential conversion may be more subject to discontinuous changes in market conditions or regulatory influence. Kline and Alig (1999) investigated the effect of land use regulations 

in Oregon on conversion of forest land to developed uses. The study found that 

urban growth boundaries have had the effect of concentrating development within 

mandated urban growth boundaries (UGBs); however, the authors also find no 

significant difference in the rate of land conversion outside of UGBs in forest- and 

farm-zoned land, before and after the land use law was implemented.

A key variable in most studies predicting land use conversion to urban and 

residential uses is population density near land subject to conversion. As measured 

over time and at sufficiently fine geographic scale (e.g., census block), population 

density provides a spatially explicit measure of migration where data are available, 

thus providing a link between population migration and land use change. Other 

studies have used proximity to urban centers to measure urbanization pressure 

(Bockstael 1996, Munn and Evans 1998, Plantinga et al. 1990). Kline et al. (2001) 

used an index of population density and distance of the three nearest urban centers 

to predict the probability of conversion of parcels from farm or forest to urban 

land use.
30

GENERAL TECHNICAL REPORT PNW-GTR-617

In an addition to the urban and regional economics literature, Wu (2001) introduced a two-dimensional, spatially explicit model that captures the influence of 

amenities on urban growth. The paper is principally a formal analysis of necessary 

and sufficient conditions for leapfrog development, and used formal proofs rather 

than data to test propositions. The author suggested that spatial heterogeneity in 

amenity values across the urban fringe is a necessary condition for patchy, leapfrog 

development, i.e., urban sprawl. The key result of the paper is that unless high-amenity locations are clustered together, or the landscape is the “featureless plain” typically assumed in urban growth models, sprawl will occur as transportation costs 

to the urban core fall. A particularly salient finding of the paper is that measures 

to preserve open space, by increasing heterogeneity of amenity values across the 

landscape, can increase sprawl rather than constrain it, contrary to the objective of 

such measures. Although the paper represents a substantial improvement over earlier papers in the urban growth literature by representing landscape characteristics 

explicitly, a data-driven application of the model remains to be implemented. 

Given the increasing use of fine-scale spatially referenced data in the nonmarket valuation literature, greater use of GIS coupled with hedonic techniques are 

likely to appear in the land use change literature. This point is made at length in 

Bockstael (1996). Augmentation of the approach used by Kline et al. (2001) and 

others with greater spatial representation of amenity characteristics as in Lutzenhiser and Netusil (2001) offers the potential to provide greater forecasting ability 

with regard to forest land fragmentation through urban and residential development. 

Much of the land use change research reviewed here was Forest Service sponsored 

and was focused on analysis of long-term trends in timber supply, wildlife habitat, 

and other resource conditions. As such, spatial accuracy in predicting land use 

change has generally not been an objective and has been pursued only insofar as it 

improved predictions of resource production trends. Increasing fragmentation of 

forest areas, however, reduces productivity of remaining commodity production, 

as well as having potentially profound ecological impacts. As such, incorporating 

greater spatial detail will increase the utility of these analyses for forest managers, 

as well as increasing the accuracy of production forecasts for national analyses.

Economics of Forest Preservation and Wilderness Designation

Although not a major body of research, a group of studies focusing mainly on 

determining the effects of forest preservation on rural economic development, 

e.g., wilderness and roadless area designation and county-level employment and 

income, has appeared in recent years. Studies using structural models to analyze 

the amenity effect of forest preservation are reviewed above. Survey-based research 
31

The Economics of Amenities and Migration in the Pacific Northwest

also has appeared in the literature, authored principally by Rudzitis and several 

coauthors. Rudzitis and Johnson (2000) provided a recent review of the published 

literature. The authors found that in several recent studies of migrants to the Northwest, and particularly to rural counties characterized by proximity to wilderness 

and other public forest land, survey respondents consistently indicate that natural 

amenities are the most important reason for their migration decision, significantly 

outranking employment motives. 

Rudzitis and Johansen (1991) surveyed residents in 11 counties across the 

United States that contained some federally designated wilderness, including 

Deschutes County in the Pacific Northwest and two northern California counties, 

Lassen and Trinity, near the Oregon border. The core of the survey was five questions gauging respondents’ attitudes toward federal wilderness areas. Among the 

11 counties, 53 percent of respondents felt that presence of designated wilderness 

was an important reason for them to relocate or stay in the county. Approximately 

half of the respondents had migrated to their county of residence within the last 10 

years. Of respondents who had migrated, 60 percent said that wilderness was an 

important reason for them to relocate, compared to 45 percent of longer term 

residents giving this response. The authors did not present cross tabulations in 

detail, so it is not possible to identify responses by county except where they 

highlighted them. 

Von Reichert and Rudzitis (1992) presented a survey of residents of and migrants to 15 fast-growing wilderness counties that showed that only 25 percent of 

the migrants increased their income, and almost 50 percent accepted income losses 

upon their moves to high-amenity counties. Amenities and quality of life were more 

important factors in the migration decision than was employment. The authors focused on migrants in the labor force and used regression analysis to identify the impact of migrants’ characteristics, their satisfaction/dissatisfaction with the previous 

location (push), and the importance of destination features (pull) on income change 

on the decision to migrate. They found that migrants in higher age brackets were 

more inclined to accept lower incomes than younger migrants, but few migrants in 

high income groups had experienced income cuts. Migrants who moved for employment reasons typically realized income gains, whereas quality-of-life-oriented 

moves tended to be associated with income losses.

A broad literature on public land management effects on regional economic 

development has been published, principally in the form of agency reports and 

other grey literature (see, e.g., Niemi et al. 1999 and Power 2001). Two recent 

studies investigated questions similar to those addressed by Duffy-Deno (1998) and 

Lewis et al. (2002), although with a broader economic development focus and less 

Survey respondents 

consistently indicate 

that natural amenities 

are the most important 

reason for their 

migration decision.
32

GENERAL TECHNICAL REPORT PNW-GTR-617

formal methods. Southwick and Associates (2000) investigated the association 

between county-level economic growth and roadless/wilderness area designation in 

Oregon, and Power (2000) completed a similar analysis of the effect of permanent 

reservation of federal roadless areas in Washington. Examining the effect in nine 

Oregon counties, Southwick and Associates found income and employment in 

extractive industries declining in relative and in some cases absolute terms, and an 

increasing importance of amenities. Results of the study include a positive correlation, strongest in rural Western counties, between increased allocation of land to 

roadless/wilderness area and income and employment growth. Power (2000) 

analyzed the potential impact of withdrawing remaining federal roadless forest 

areas from commercial harvest on local economies in the nonmetropolitan areas of 

Washington adjacent to national forests. Power addressed claims that withdrawal 

would have a significant effect on income in the wood-processing industries or that 

changes in this sector would lead to declines in the economic well-being of local 

economies. Analyzing changes in total and average income, employment, and population growth, Power noted that in nonmetro counties of the region, average earnings fell over the period 1980-90, at a time when timber harvest levels peaked. 

During the subsequent decade, timber harvest levels dropped precipitously, but 

average income levels stabilized or reversed direction while population growth and 

employment increased dramatically. Based on this precedent and additional evidence, the author suggested that withdrawal of roadless areas would have no 

significant negative economic impacts except for the case of a very few isolated 

timber-dependent communities. Citing nonmetropolitan population increases above 

national and even metropolitan Washington averages, despite substantially lower 

average income, the author suggested that the “second paycheck” phenomenon 

strongly characterizes the relationship between high amenities and lower average 

pay in much of the rural Northwest.12

12 The notion that residents receive economic benefits from natural resource amenities has 

been popularized by the term “second paycheck” (Niemi and Whitelaw 1999), referring 

to a benefit received that is equivalent, in some sense, to additional income. The notion 

that the “first paycheck” is often smaller as a result does not appear to have been popularized to the same extent. Power (2001) investigated low average pay and income levels in 

the region’s nonmetropolitan areas relative to national averages, to test whether the gap is 

attributable to the decline in resource-extraction industries in the region. Rather than being 

due to conversion from a manufacturing to a service-based economy, the author found 

that pay and income gaps are attributable mainly to lower economic density, measured as 

average workers per acre, in the nonmetro areas of the region. Although not formally modeled, the author presented evidence that some portion of the remaining gap, amounting to 

an average of $3,000 in nonmetro Washington, is attributable to the greater availability of 

natural amenities relative to metropolitan areas.
33

The Economics of Amenities and Migration in the Pacific Northwest

Integration and Synthesis: Key Amenities and 

Migration Economics Research Issues Relevant 

to Natural Resource Management

The preceding review identifies several distinct lines of research that provide different perspectives on the relationship between population growth and management of 

public land resources and associated amenities. The principal finding of the review 

of these various literatures is that natural amenities are a powerful force associated 

with migration flows, particularly with increasing mobility and the aging of the U.S. 

population. Beyond this general result, however, it is difficult to find studies that 

provide specific findings useful for natural resource policy and management. That 

is, the broadly supported result that migration to locations of high natural amenities 

is a long-term and increasing trend provides context for natural resources planning 

and policy, but provides relatively little specific guidance for policy and management decisions. Mismatches of scale and technique have hampered their usefulness 

in this context. Because amenity resources are inherently spatial, the coarse (e.g., 

county) scale of most migration studies does not provide the spatially specific information needed to guide management of amenity resources. However, the different 

disciplinary and subdisciplinary approaches have generated techniques that, given 

application in the right settings, could yield insights providing powerful guidance 

for public land management. A few recent studies addressed the effect of wilderness and roadless area designation on county-level employment and population 

growth by using rigorous analytical methods, complementing more integrative and 

qualitative analyses that have taken a broader look at national forest management 

on economic development. Although the more formal studies use data from other 

regions of the United States, they offer particularly relevant analyses for public land 

managers in the Pacific Northwest. Application of similar techniques to data from 

the region could be accomplished with relative expedience to provide decision support for regional policymakers and managers.

A further challenge for research is to integrate the techniques of the different 

subdisciplines and literatures reviewed above to answer more specific questions 

facing land managers. With better availability of spatially referenced data, there is 

a growing convergence of powerful analytic techniques at spatial scales useful to 

land management. Further integration, especially in the use of hedonic techniques 

to model land use conversion, offer the best potential to provide useful analysis and 

forecasting of public demand for amenities from public lands. 

Migration to 

locations of high 

natural amenities 

is a long-term and 

increasing trend,

 but that finding 

provides little specific 

guidance for policy 

and management 

decisions.
34

GENERAL TECHNICAL REPORT PNW-GTR-617

As rapid inmigration continues, demographic changes, both in the metropolitan 

areas of the Pacific Northwest and perhaps more significantly, in nonmetropolitan 

areas, lead to changing expectations of local and regional residents regarding management of public land in the region. The recreational demands of urban populations as well as homeowners seeking rural residential environments in forested 

areas are driven by natural amenities. Better understanding of the demand for 

amenities and how this plays out in the migration behavior of populations, at the 

national to local and even site-specific scales, can help prepare public land managers for the changing impact of human uses of forested ecosystems. 

Demand for Amenity-Rich Locations

Although the evidence reviewed above is persuasive that regional migration is substantially influenced by amenities and that amenities play a particularly strong role 

in migration to rural locations and small, amenity-rich cities, there has been little 

analysis of the effect of broad forest management policies or localized management 

activities on migration at finer scales. In part, use of county-level data obscures 

cross-border effects, e.g., commuting. Western counties also are much larger than 

those in other regions of the United States; hence county-level analysis is less useful 

in the Pacific Northwest and other Western regions than elsewhere. 

In the growth-follows-amenities discussion above, a principal argument is that 

falling timber harvest levels on national forest lands will not ultimately have a negative effect on local economies because, it is argued, they are generally more economically diversified than expected because of their attractiveness for a broad array 

of commercial activities owing to amenity values. The most clearly articulated 

theoretical response suggests that, because amenities tend to be static, they are not 

the dynamic cause driving net migration flows. Rather, changing tastes and the declining costs of locating in nontraditional and even remote locations as technology 

renders firms and workers more mobile appear to provide the disequilibrium factors 

driving the current migration cycle. Although natural amenities at the regional scale 

tend to change only very slowly if at all, as the spatial scale decreases, short-term 

management effects become increasingly significant in the perception of amenity 

qualities of a location.13 A clearer understanding of the sensitivity of local migration to dynamic changes in amenities associated with natural resource policy would 

therefore contribute to the theoretical debate, as well as provide managers with 

greater appreciation of the effects of forest management on the human environment.

13 See Riddel 2001 for an application of techniques to address time trends in amenity 

factors in the hedonic housing price literature.

Changing tastes and 

the declining costs 

of locating in remote 

areas appear to be 

driving the current 

migration cycle.
35

The Economics of Amenities and Migration in the Pacific Northwest

Amenity Compensation

The popular notion that natural resource amenities provide an additional source of 

welfare to residents of amenity-rich locations, the “second paycheck,” is contrary 

to what would be expected by economic theory where interregional labor markets 

are in equilibrium. In theory, wage and housing costs would adjust to bring regional 

labor markets into equilibrium, given differentials in the amenity qualities in different locations. Thus, in equilibrium, one would expect lower wages and higher 

housing costs in amenity-rich areas. As such, the “second paycheck” would be compensation for lower wages and higher costs of living, i.e., a lower “first-paycheck,” 

and not a net gain relative to amenity-poor locations. Empirically, however, regional 

labor markets are not in equilibrium, and the United States has seen a long-term 

migration to amenity-rich areas, which suggests that wages and housing costs have 

not yet fully adjusted. Indeed, as Mueser and Graves (1995) pointed out, trends in 

increasing retirement, income, and technologically aided mobility all suggest an increasing migration to amenity-rich locations, in contrast to labor market (i.e., wage 

rate) fluctuations, which tend to be episodic and do not represent a prolonged influence on migration trends. The effect of amenities is also somewhat more ambiguous 

than suggested by the simple version of labor demand and supply equilibrium. For 

example, numerous studies have found that amenity values are positively expressed 

through lower wages and higher housing costs. However, by simultaneously modeling changes in migration, employment, and income levels, Deller et al. (2001) found 

no negative association between amenities and income levels, although the effect 

of amenities on employment was more ambiguous owing to retirement migration. 

Roback (1982) found that amenities were unambiguously associated with higher 

housing costs, but the effect on wages depended on whether the amenity was purely 

a consumer good or if it also acted as a production amenity by lowering firms’ 

nonlabor production costs (e.g., climatic conditions like lower snowfall). In a survey 

of early/mid-career, late-career, and retired migrants, Judson et al. (1999) found 

that late-career migrants, who are at the peak of their earning cycle, reported losses 

of $4,000 to $10,000 in annual earnings subsequent to migrating to high-amenity 

areas. Clearly, a definitive analysis of natural resource amenity values is not likely 

to emerge given the complexity of modeling the many factors influencing demand. 

Most of the analyses reviewed in this paper, however, focus on large spatial scales 

and interregional markets. The potential for more conclusive analysis and finer 

spatial scales, e.g. intraregional, has yet to be adequately tested.
36

GENERAL TECHNICAL REPORT PNW-GTR-617

Retirement Migration

As noted in McGranahan (1999) and several other studies, retirement migration 

looms as a potentially massive influx of population into rural counties in the West. 

The broader implications of the growth of so-called “mailbox economies,” in which 

a substantial part of income comes from pensions and other outside sources rather 

than locally earned wages, are beyond the scope of this review. However, the potential for changes in the economic base, demand for public services, use of public land 

and numerous other social and economic dynamics of rural communities throughout the region resulting from this demographic shift are profound. Studies reviewed 

above have indicated that counties high in public land amenities have grown in 

population and income relative to other rural communities, largely owing to retirement inmigration. Most of the analysis of this phenomenon thus far, however, has 

been based on aggregate data or statistical methods with very limited predictive 

power, and adaptation of more spatially explicit data and analytical methods may 

help to better anticipate those locations that are most likely to see the greatest influx 

of retirement migration. 

Expanding Wildland-Urban Interface and Forest Fragmentation

Two principal concerns for traditional forest management are the future supply of 

forest land and the management of wildfire across public and private forest land. 

The encroachment of urban uses on forest land represents a principal agent of 

change for both of these issues, particularly in the West.14 Fragmentation of commercial forest land by urban and rural residential land uses both restricts the level 

of commercial activity that is viable in many areas (Kline et al. 2004) and greatly 

increases the cost of fire suppression and the likelihood of wildfire initiation (U.S. 

Department of Agriculture, Forest Service 1995, 2003). Current efforts to decrease 

the level of fuel on public and private forest land are anticipated to take decades 

to complete and will ultimately command a large part of the budget for forest land 

management (U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, and U.S. Department 

of the Interior 2001). Protecting communities is a principal objective of the National 

Fire Plan (U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service 2001), and an improved 

capacity to anticipate, in a spatial context, where and how communities are likely 

14 Although the National Resource Inventory (U.S. Department of Agriculture, Natural 

Resources Conservation Service 2001) indicates that nationally, 23.7 million acres of 

cropland, pasture, and rangeland was converted to forest in 1982–97, the Forest Service 

Resource Planning Act assessment analysis of timberland (Alig et al. 2003) found that the 

Pacific Coast region was the only area where total timberland (defined as forest land where 

timber production is commercially viable) declined between 1977 and 1997, and that industry-owned timberland declined nationally over the same period.
37

The Economics of Amenities and Migration in the Pacific Northwest

to grow over time could assist in most efficiently allocating fuel reduction to those 

areas that currently and prospectively are most in demand for amenity-driven uses. 

Although land use change at the wildland-urban interface is associated with spatial 

factors other than amenity attractors, modeling migration and land use change at 

useful scales will be improved considerably with careful attention to amenity values 

of potential development sites. 

Recent results from the hedonic property valuation literature indicate that 

permanent open space, i.e., public land or private land protected by covenant, have 

a greater influence on property values than open space that is subject to potential 

development in the indefinite future and that views of forest management activities 

diminish property values. A related question is the comparative effect of public forest land dedicated to preservation relative to nearby private land subject to extractive uses. Lewis et al. (2002) found that public forest conservation land had a more 

significant effect on county-level population growth than did wilderness areas. Applying the same analysis to the Pacific Northwest and addressing land use change 

rather than population growth could provide useful guidance in addressing the 

effects of forest fragmentation. Recent changes in land use designation on national 

forest land subject to the Northwest Forest Plan (e.g., late-successional reserves) 

provide the potential for a natural experiment on the effect of changing amenity 

supply in the context of large-scale national forest management.

National Forest Response to Amenity-Driven Migration 

Most of the discussion above treats amenities as an exogenous determinant of 

migration. Perhaps the most salient questions for public land managers relate to 

the changing demands of regional populations for natural resource amenities, 

including recreational and scenic values and ecosystem services. Although some 

research indicates that declining timber harvests and wilderness designation 

(Duffy-Deno 1998, Lewis et. al. 2002, Power 2000, Southwick and Associates 

2000) have had relatively negligible effect on county-level population or employment growth in most amenity-rich locations, there has been no research on the 

effect of increased emphasis on ecosystem management and concurrent changes in 

recreation resources on regional or county-level population growth. A broader 

question, and one with more pervasive implications for forest management in the 

Pacific Northwest, is the changing demand for amenity resources as population 

density and rural and urban demographics change over the coming decades. Although this literature review has largely focused on the effect of natural amenities 

The question of 

how migration 

influences the 

demand for amenities 

may be the most 

important one for 

the next round of 

forest planning.
38

GENERAL TECHNICAL REPORT PNW-GTR-617

on migration, the question of how migration influences the demand for amenities 

may be the most important one for forest managers as the next round of forest 

planning approaches. 

Conclusions

This review has focused primarily on the influence of amenities on migration. 

Several subfields in economics and other social sciences provide diverse analytical 

perspectives in investigating amenity-driven migration. Rural demography, regional 

labor market, and housing market studies of the effect of broadly defined amenities, 

and a variety of studies focusing more narrowly on the influence of natural resource 

amenities were reviewed. Across these various literatures, the evidence of broad 

association between amenity-rich locations and positive inmigration is substantial. 

The effect of amenities on wage rates, housing costs, and employment is somewhat 

more ambiguous: although economic theory holds that prices in the labor and housing markets would adjust to offset the pull of amenities in population migration, 

net migration to amenity-rich locations remains positive, suggesting that the price 

adjustments that would bring equilibrium to interregional migration have not taken 

place. A common explanation for this is the persistent trends in increasing income, 

retirement, and the technologically-aided mobility of both individual migrants and 

firms, trends that are expected to persist in the decades ahead. 

Although the existing literature provides broad support for the view that amenities are a positive influence on inmigration regionally as well as locally, particularly in rural communities in the West, very little research has been conducted that 

provides more useful results for forest managers and policymakers. With a few 

exceptions, either because of mismatches of scale or analytical technique, analyses 

have not generally addressed specific amenity resources that are subject to change 

as a result of public land management or policy. Indeed, it is commonly assumed 

that natural resource amenities are relatively fixed, and it is the changing tastes and 

means of migrants that drive the dynamics of amenity migration. Although this 

may functionally be the case at national and regional scales, it is unlikely that the 

effect of management and policy changes on resource amenities has no effect on 

migration rates (or associated economic variables like wages, housing costs, and 

employment rates) at finer spatial scales. Thus far, these issues have been explored 

mainly in broad terms and in qualitative studies of the effects of public land management on economic development. Integration of theory and technique across 

social science disciplines and literatures combined with improving spatial data on 
39

The Economics of Amenities and Migration in the Pacific Northwest

populations and demographics, as well as physiogeographic characteristics of the 

forest landscapes, make quantitative research possible at scales more useful for 

addressing questions relevant to public land management.

Two broad sets of questions face public land managers with respect to the 

effect of amenities on migration. Long-term trends in the U.S. economy indicate 

that demand for, and migration to, amenity-rich locations is likely to increase for 

the foreseeable future. The effect of this growing demand on public expectations 

for land managers is a pressing issue. Assuming the supply of natural resource 

amenities is fixed, analysis conducted for public land agencies should focus externally on the trends in migration of individuals and firms, in local and regional 

economies and communities. But at the scale relevant to public land policy, and in 

particular, management, amenity supply is clearly not fixed. Better understanding 

of the public welfare and economic development effects of policy- and management-driven changes in amenity resources would be one result of greater focus 

on these research questions. Perhaps the most pressing questions for public land 

managers are at the complex intersection of the demand and supply of amenity and 

other forest resources. Increasing demand and consumption of public land amenities, both through recreational use of public land and land use conversion of private 

land in the urban-wildland interface has largely unknown implications for forest 

fragmentation and the ability of both public and private forest land to provide a 

broad range of resources, including commodities and noncommodity values like 

ecosystem functions and intact habitats. Further, the influence of land management decisions, like large-scale fuel reduction, timber harvest, and changes in the 

preservation status of public land, on the spatial distribution of migration and land 

use change is largely unaddressed in the scientific literature. Data and analytical 

methods, however, are increasingly well-developed and offer the potential to permit 

valuable research to support public land decisionmaking. 

Acknowledgments

Funding for this study was provided by the USDA Forest Service, Pacific Northwest 

Region. Valuable reviews were provided by David Lewis (Oregon State University), 

Stephen McCool (University of Montana), Susan Stewart (USDA Forest Service, 

North Central Research Station), and Geof Donovan (USDA Forest Service, Pacific 

Northwest Research Station). I am grateful for advice and suggestions provided by 

Ralph Alig and Richard Haynes of the USDA Forest Service.

Increasing recreational 

use of public land and 

land use conversion 

of private land have 

largely unknown 

implications for forest 

ecosystem functions 

and intact habitats.
40

GENERAL TECHNICAL REPORT PNW-GTR-617

Metric Equivalents

When you know: Multiply by: To find:

Feet .3048 Meters

Miles 1.609 Kilometers

Square feet .0929 Square meters

Acres .4047 Hectares

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