Question

what are the social determinants of land use pattern

Answer 1

Changes in land use patterns impact significantly environmental conditions as well as economic and social welfare. These changes are influenced by socio-economic as well as pedo-climatic factors. A good understanding of how these factors influence land use patterns would provide new dimensions to policy making and public policy evaluation. To this end, we propose a Spatial Multinomial Probit model to examine the determinants of land use change, at the parcel level, in the French D´epartement du Rhones from 1992 to 2003. It is based on an economic model that assumes that landowners have a choice between 4 land use categories for a given parcel at a given date: (1) agricultural, (2) forest, (3) urban and (4) no use.