THE IMPACT OF PARK CONNECTORS ON PUBLIC HOUSING PRICE IN SINGAPORE

Abstract

This research demonstrates the study of the impact of park connectors on Singapore’s public residential housing market (HDB flats) in two aspects of analysis via the cross-sectional Hedonic Pricing model. Firstly, the general proximity effect of the island-wide park connectors system is analysed through the proximity analysis where several distance bands in intervals of 100 metres are assessed and compared. Subsequently, a time-based study through the adoption of Difference-in-Difference (DID) model for investigating the impact of the launch of five existing Park Connector Network (PCN) loops in Singapore, based on their respective date of launch. A total of 120,348 HDB resale transactions from 2004 to 2018 were extracted from Data.gov.sg for the study.

In both regression models, the impact of park connectors on HDB resale prices were controlled for the hedonic attributes, structural aspects, spatial aspects, locational and time fixed effects. The study found that proximity to park connectors is significantly positive with HDB resale prices, across the whole nation. On the other hand, the DID estimator analysis on the impact of the launch of PCN loops was found to vary across different regions. A positive impact was observed for the two new PCN loops, and this variance in impact could be attributed to safety perceptions of cycling lanes, government incentives as well as locational attributes of the individual PCN loops.

Overall, this study fills up some literature gaps in understanding the impact of park connectors on the public residential housing market in Singapore.

Keywords: Hedonic Pricing Model, Difference-in-Differences, Cycling, Housing Price, Park Connector Network, Sustainable Transportation