Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Land Use Policy journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/landusepol The visual impact of agricultural sheds on rural landscapes: The willingness to pay for mitigation solutions and treatment effects Vito Frontuto a, *, Alessandro Corsi a , Silvia Novelli b,c , Paola Gullino b , Federica Larcher b,c a Department of Economics and Statistics “Cognetti de Martiis”, University of Turin, Italy b Department of Agriculture, Forest and Food Sciences, University of Turin, Italy c Research Centre for Rural Development of Hilly Areas, University of Turin, Italy ARTICLE INFO Keywords: Visual impact Rural landscape Mixed logit Treatment effect Discrete choice experiment UNESCO heritage ABSTRACT New rural and industrial sheds cause significant transformations determining a negative change in landscape perception. In this paper the willingness to pay (WTP) of residents to mitigate the visual impact of sheds in the rural areas of the UNESCO World Heritage Site “Vineyard Landscape of Piedmont: Langhe-Roero and Monferrato” is estimated through a Choice Experiment (CE). The CE survey was carried out through face-to-face interviews involving 400 residents. The set of mitigation attributes was selected by means of a landscape analysis and presented to respondents using a set of images (close and distant views). Conditional Logit (CLogit) and Mixed Logit (MXL) models both in preference and in WTP space were estimated. From the empirical point of view, the study shows that sheds are generally perceived as negative landscape elements, and that residents are willing to pay for mitigation solutions, such as tree lines and formal hedgerows. The results are relevant for policy makers since they suggest how agricultural sheds are perceived and which mitigation strategies are preferred by local residents. From the methodological point of view, we estimate and test different models for assessing the effect of the visual treatment (close vs distant view). We show the theoretical equivalence of a fully interacted model (i.e., estimated on the whole sample and including interaction terms with the treatment), with split models of the choice for separate subsamples submitted or not to the treatment. We find that in estimation the equivalence holds in the results of Conditional Logit models, but not in Mixed Logit models. The reasons and implications are discussed. 1. Introduction The first aim of the European Landscape Convention (ELC, 2000) is to encourage Member States to promote protection, management and planning of landscapes. For ELC, landscape is “an area, as perceived by people, whose character is the result of the action and interaction of natural and/or human factor”. Moreover, within the society, there is a growing awareness of the importance of the living landscape quality. This quality is the result of a combined set of values (ecological, his- torical, rural and cultural), which determines a visual asset and dif- ferent aesthetic effects. The introduction of new anthropic elements in the landscape can nevertheless have a negative aesthetic impact. In particular, the architecture of new buildings, mainly linked to rural/ industrial needs and to renewable energies, plays an important role in determining the landscape’s visual quality (Dupont et al., 2017), with a negative evaluation when it has a poor aesthetic integration into the surrounding landscape (Torres Sibille et al., 2009a), though for marine landscapes Carr-Harris and Lang (2019) found a positive effect of windmills. Several studies for analysing and reducing the visual impacts of new buildings on rural landscapes were performed concerning wind, photovoltaic and solar plants (de Vries et al., 2012; Rodrigues et al., 2010; Chiabrando et al., 2009; Torres Sibille et al., 2009a,b; Rogge et al., 2008), but only few dealt with rural and industrial sheds (Tassinari et al., 2007; García et al., 2006; Hernández et al., 2004). New rural and industrial sheds cause significant transformations such as land consumption, trees elimination, introduction of new architectures and materials, and overall determine a negative change in landscape per- ception. The aesthetic damage is particularly strong on rural landscapes shaped by historical agricultural practices that gave it a specific value, both visual and cultural, for the local population and for the visitors. Nevertheless, some methods are available to reduce the negative visual impact of these buildings. The visual impact mitigation methods may https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landusepol.2019.104337 Received 5 February 2019; Received in revised form 23 October 2019; Accepted 2 November 2019 ⁎ Corresponding author. Current address: Department of Economics and Statistics “Cognetti de Martiis”, University of Turin, Lungo Dora Siena 100/A, I-10153, Turin, Italy. E-mail address: vito.frontuto@unito.it (V. Frontuto). Land Use Policy xxx (xxxx) xxxx 0264-8377/ © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Please cite this article as: Vito Frontuto, et al., Land Use Policy, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landusepol.2019.104337