ABSTRACT
The ecosystem services provided by wetlands can be direct or indirect. The direct services can be mostly valued through market prices, but the indirect service like aesthetic beauty and its impact on property prices surrounding the natural resource cannot be directly measured. To single out the economic effect of particular amenity which influenced the land property prices, the advanced valuation technique Hedonic property pricing was most popularly used. In this study, it was attempted to assess using the hedonic property pricing technique, the impact of the presence of the freshwater body, the Vellayani Lake on land property prices surrounding it. The results revealed that the marginal implicit price of getting one cent of land with lake view evaluated at mean property price of Rs. 2,44250 was Rs.79171. The total aesthetic value of land with the scenic beauty of the lake was Rs. 275.92 crores.
