Aviation Impacts on Property Values and Management: The Case of Suvarnabhumi International Airport

AbstractMany countries have developed policies and measures to deal with the external impact of aviation on the wider community. There is, however, often controversy and lack of acceptance of some measures, such as compensation, in the communities affected by aviation. Such measures are often felt to be ineffective and perceived as unfair. A clear and objective model for determining compensation would be helpful to reduce controversy. The objective of this study is therefore to examine the relationship between aviation impacts and property values in the case of Thailand's Suvarnabhumi Airport for application to the possible improvement of compensation packages. Multiple regression analysis was used to determine the relationship between five common impacts of aviation (safety, noise, scenery, air pollution, and traffic) and property value change, with data from a survey of sample communities around the airport. The results, both for the overall neighborhood and for separate land used types, show that only noise and air pollution demonstrate significant negative relations with property value. The effect of noise drives a higher impact on property price than the effect of air pollution. The main contribution of this research is to improve developing country compensation models by applied measurement from regression analysis to identify factors with significant impacts, using property value change as proxy to measure the impact of the airport. For example, in the case of Thailand, a compensation model should consider noise and air pollution as the main factors rather than consider only noise contour area. The higher weight on noise should be designed to reflect land use types. Furthermore the market value of property loss should be taken into account when designing a compensation package. The survey and regression method used in this study can be adapted for finding relevant factors and suggesting appropriate compensation for other environmental and infrastructure development projects