GOLF COURSE VERSUS PUBLIC PARKS IN SINGAPORE : A SOCIAL COST BENEFIT APPROACH

Abstract

Public parks and golf courses are alternatives in land use. They are a source of conflict because of scarcity of land in Singapore and because of the delicate equity issue of why golfers should have such vast open spaces (at a subsidy) at the expense of the public. The conflict is made worse by the fact that golf courses usually sit on the very few irreversible natural areas left in Singapore. Therefore, implicitly this study is also a reflection of the conservation-versus-development issue regarding natural sites. To help resolve the conflict, a social cost-benefit analysis is used. It proves to be superior compared to the market-mechanism-and-profitability criterion for appraising project because it takes all social costs (external or internal) and social benefits (tangible or intangible) into consideration. Under the assumption of an additive social welfare function, with no distributional weights attached, it is found that a public nature park is socially more beneficial than a golf course. The result of this study therefore provides support for the conservation of natural areas faced with an imminent threat of a golf course development. At the same time, the government should re-examine the rent they charge to golf clubs when currently this does not reflect the full opportunity cost. This study gives more emphasis to a description of the various costs and benefits involved. It does not provide a vigorous quantification of the costs and benefits. Nonetheless, a rough quantification is done, based on an inferential basis; i.e., different sources that best fit the situations in the study are used as references. However, it is believed that this in no way diminishes the usefulness of the study because it has succeeded in achieving the aim of presenting in an organized form the issues involved in the conflict of land uses and given the constraint of time and resources, it has provided a second best, objective analysis of the issues.