Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Land Use Policy journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/landusepol Agriculturallandconversion:Impactsofeconomicandnaturalriskfactorsin a coastal area Sheng Li a , Denis Nadolnyak b , Valentina Hartarska c, ⁎ a University of Florida, Gulf Coast Research and Education Center, 14625 CR 672, Wimauma, FL 33598, United States b Auburn University, Department of Agricultural Economics and Rural Sociology, 209 Comer Hall, Auburn, AL 36849, United States c Auburn University, Department of Agricultural Economics and Rural Sociology, 210 Comer Hall, Auburn, AL 36849, United States ARTICLEINFO Keywords: Agricultural land conversion Duration analysis Natural hazards Coastal area Land use planning ABSTRACT Agriculturallandhasundergoneextensiveconversionintoresidentialandcommercialusesvulnerabletocoastal hazards and other natural disasters. We use interval censored survival models while controlling for endogeneity andspatialdependencetoexaminethedynamicsofagriculturaltourbanlandconversionusingparcel-leveldata from Lee County in Southwest Florida over 1988-2008. The results suggest that food risks slow down farmland conversion while locational attributes, proxies for farming proftability, and regional economic indicators have expected signs and magnitudes. Spatial model specifcation indicates positive contagion externalities in land conversion. These fndings may be helpful in land use policy design. 1. Introduction Over the past few decades, agricultural land has undergone ex- tensive conversion into residential and commercial uses that are more vulnerable to natural disasters. Coastal regions, in particular, have seen many inundations whose impacts were aggravated by the intense ur- banization of food-prone areas, which led to loss of human life and propertydamages(Wagneretal.,2009).Empiricalworkhasshownthat net returns to alternative land uses are the major driver of land use change (Irwin and Bockstael, 2002, 2007; Bell and Bockstael, 2000).In a coastal area, however, land use change is also afected by the dif- ferences in expected losses from natural disasters (hazards) in diferent land uses (Bin and Kruse, 2006). This paper evaluates the impact of both rent capitalization and potential losses from natural disasters on land conversion dynamics in an urbanized coastal area in Florida using interval censored duration analysis. Much of the existing work in natural sciences has focused on the relationshipsbetweennaturalriskandlandusechange.Hydrologicand geographic studies emphasize the impact of natural disasters on land use change. One concern identifed in this literature is that land cover change afects not only the degree of infltration but also runof from precipitation (Parrott et al., 2009). According to Mustard et al. (2012), land surface performs a crucial function in the water cycle as it redis- tributes precipitation into evaporation, runof, or soil moisture storage. Tollan (2002) and Brath et al. (2006) fnd that food frequency can be signifcantly reduced by modifyingthelandscapeorthroughlandcover change. Similarly, Du et al. (2012), in analyzing land use in a coastal areainChina,suggestthatlandusechangesignifcantlyincreasesdirect runof in the long term, which is closely correlated with food events. Another concern is the impact of urbanization on the discharge process that increases the risk of fooding due to increased peak discharge and volume (Nirupama and Simonovic, 2007; Suriya and Mudgal, 2012). Schilling et al. (2014) also argue that undeveloped land can efciently reduce food risks. The economic models of land use change focus on explaining the causal relationships between the returns to land in diferent uses and land use change. The focus is on individual owners’ land use decisions governed either by maximization of expected returns or utility derived from the land (Irwin and Bockstael, 2002; Irwin et al., 2003; Irwin and Bockstael, 2007). Landowners’ decisions on whether and when to convert their land are based on maximization of the net present value (NPV) of returns from land and the expected exposure to natural ha- zards in diferent land uses. The decision to convert emphasizes in- dividual choice in a static setting, while the timing of conversion in- corporates future (expected) changes in demand, supply, and productivity, as well as the option value of not converting (Bell et al., 2006). The theory has been tested in empirical studies that identify land’s locational attributes and soil quality as fundamental elements in the agricultural land conversion decisions (Miller and Plantinga, 1999; Lubowski et al., 2008), but the role of natural hazards remains less https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landusepol.2018.10.016 Received 23 April 2018; Received in revised form 4 October 2018; Accepted 4 October 2018 ⁎ Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: lisheng@uf.edu (S. Li), nadolda@auburn.edu (D. Nadolnyak), hartavm@auburn.edu (V. Hartarska). Land Use Policy xxx (xxxx) xxx–xxx 0264-8377/ © 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Please cite this article as: Li, S., Land Use Policy, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landusepol.2018.10.016