The Spillover Effects of Protected Areas on Local Tax Bases: A Spatial Study of Municipalities in Western France

This article examines the spatial economic effects of protected areas on municipal tax wealth, focusing on both their restrictive impact on local development and their potential positive spillovers on adjacent municipalities. We first develop a theoretical model based on urban economic theory to formalize the interactions between protected areas and local tax revenues, highlighting how conservation policies can generate both disincentives and spatial redistribution effects. This framework guides our empirical analysis, in which we estimate Spatial Durbin Models (SDM) using data from municipalities in Brittany and Pays de la Loire, two regions in western France where protected areas have become a significant component of land use policies. By incorporating multiple spatial weight matrices, we capture the heterogeneous effects of protection at different distances. Our results confirm that while municipalities hosting protected areas tend to experience a reduction in their tax base due to regulatory constraints, adjacent municipalities benefit from positive externalities, leading to increased tax wealth. This spillover effect is more pronounced in areas farther from urban centers, where natural amenities play a stronger role in local economic attractiveness. These findings suggest that current conservation policies may generate financial disincentives for municipalities to support protection efforts, leading to suboptimal conservation outcomes. As a policy implication, we argue for the implementation of transfer mechanisms to redistribute the economic benefits of protected areas and mitigate the opportunity costs borne by protected municipalities, thereby improving the efficiency of conservation policies in France.