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Societies need to govern soils to maintain the various ecosystem services provided to humans, for instance ensuring food security, biodiversity conservation, water regulation or carbon sequestratio...

In the light of global urbanization and biodiversity loss, ecosystem services provided by urban green spaces (UGS) are becoming increasingly important, not least as a recovery and recreation opportunity for citizens. The valuation of UGS is significant for urban planners, who make decisions on the creation or removal of UGS. We analysed the influence of UGS on residential property prices in Leipzig, Germany, by applying a hedonic pricing analysis. This analysis complements the existing literature by considering both sale and rental prices for flats and houses; moreover, the shape of UGS is taken into account explicitly; finally, it is the first study in Germany to analyse UGS in hedonic studies to such an extent. The results demonstrate that the size of the nearest UGS has a stronger impact on prices compared to the distance from it. With respect to shape, we found that the simpler the UGS shape, the higher the prices. Although we find an impact of UGS on prices, the impact is smaller than that of other characteristics. The proposed valuation approach and obtained results inform urban planners regarding the design of new UGS and raise awareness about potential intended and unintended economic and social effects.

Transaction costs (TCs) are often claimed to be a key determinant of how policies are actually implemented on the ground and what effect they ultimately deliver on soil quality and functions. Focusing on agriculture-related soil protection policies in Eastern Germany, we analyse data from key informant interviews in two case study areas (Brandenburg and Saxony-Anhalt) in order to provide new evidence that TCs do indeed matter for policy implementation. We systematically map TCs that occur at the policy implementation and operation stages and their drivers. Our data showed that in addition to TCs for ‘information management’ and ‘coordination’, existing frameworks need to be extended to explicitly consider TCs for ‘enforcement’. Results illustrate that there is a broad range of TCs that are due to the complexity of soils and their management, property rights assignment and administrative processes. To some extent TCs in one policy arena can be reduced; however, often they are only superseded in pla...