The Socio-Economic Value of Urban Green Infrastructure: Statistical Equations for Assessing Perceived Urban Economic Growth
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.25034/ijcua.2026.v10n2-11Keywords:
urban economy, urban green infrastructure, economic valuation, structural equation modellingAbstract
Erbil and Sulaymaniyah, in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, are converting green land into built land, and the valuation methods that would say what is lost presume property markets and environmental accounts that neither city keeps. This study measures the socio-economic value that residents and businesses attribute to urban green infrastructure and links it, through three equations, to their perception of the city’s economic growth. Three quantities are kept apart: perceived contribution, stated willingness to pay, and actual growth, which the design does not observe. A dual-frame survey of 1,593 residents and businesses supplies a composite structural model in which green endowment is associated with five value channels, and the channels with perceived growth, measured by the one item that does not name greenery. The model explained 43% of that item’s variance; wellbeing and productivity carried the largest coefficient (β = 0.231). A model-weighted indicator stood at 58.4–60.6 across the four groups and anchors, through stated willingness to pay, to 6,975–7,145 dinars per household monthly, a stated rather than a revealed amount. Measurement was invariant across three language versions. The chain is offered as a proposition for testing in other data-scarce cities rather than as a transferable property.
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