Conference Agenda

Most of the recent ESG literature has studied how ESG rating affects investing behaviour in the capital markets but has little focus on the commercial real estate market. We contribute to the recent ESG and real estate literature by examining how ESG ratings affect the commercial real estate market and how ESG and non-ESG firms’ property transactions behave differently in the acquisition of green buildings in the United States from 2009 to 2021. We find that companies (acquirers) with ESG coverage and a higher level of ESG rating have a strong preference for green buildings and are willing to pay higher property premiums (9.33%), especially after the local natural disaster shock and green building certification announcement.

Sports facilities are an integral part of communities, providing a place for recreation, fitness, and social interaction. However, they can also have a significant environmental impact both during construction and operation. Sustainable design of sports facilities involves designing and building facilities that minimise negative environmental impacts, reduce energy consumption, promote sustainable practices and can positively impact the valuation and benefit the surrounding community. Sustainable metrics and design practices in the built environment are becoming increasingly important to stakeholders. Property valuers are more regularly including the sustainable features of the design in their considerations of an appropriate market value for particular assets. Sustainable design has the potential to optimise the market value and public perception of sporting facilities as well as the real estate that surrounds them. The purpose of this study is to explore the impact of sustainable sports facility design on property valuation practice and to provide suggestions for valuers, architects, property asset managers and developers on how to align the benefits of community development and redevelopment or multi-purpose focus. Considering the recent emphasis on the reconversion and conservation of Olympic facilities, this study focused on sustainability features of sport facility design property value implications. This study analyses the world-leading model of Sydney Olympic Park community development and its success in shaping future policy directions for sustainable design of sports facilities. Best-practice sustainable design of sports facilities should consider not only the direct environmental impact (land use, construction materials, energy and water consumption, transport and waste generation) but must also address the long-term viability and usefulness of the facility to the community to ensure that it does not have the potential to consider a “white elephant” in the future.

Green Building Certification (GBC) is an attempt to improve the sustainability of buildings by the signaling to customers the greenness of buildings so that they can make more informed decision. A creditable third-party GBC should also facilitate governments to formulate policy to promote green buildings for creating a sustainable living environment in the long run.

Most previous studies show that an office building with GBC can command a higher rent / price (Green Build Premium or GBP) than those without. There is much less research on examining the why such premium exists. One directly observable reason is that the GBP of official buildings is a result of institution constraints imposed by corporate social responsibility (CSR) policy of many large corporations which explicitly prohibit them from renting non-green building. However, non-institutional factors such as environmental consciousness, tangible benefits (savings in energy and maintenance costs), supply side marketing tactics, and so on are also possible contributing factors.

Studying GBP in the residential buildings can eliminate the influence of the CSR effect, which allows us to examine non-institutional factors that affect GBP. Of the few studies that examined GBP in the residential market, their main focus was on the estimating the average GBP without analyzing the underlying causes of such premium. By examining the temporal and spatial variation in the GBP, we can infer the contributing factors to GBP.

This study finds that residential buildings with green labels command a premium and that the premium is does not decline over time. Furthermore, the green premium is higher in higher income areas.

In recent years, China puts increasing emphasis on the balance of economic development and environmental preservation. A set of policies has been intensively made to accelerate the reform of collective forest institution, which is anticipated to bring positive effects on both economic and environmental fields. Compared to the rural land reform, however, this blueprint does not work very well and makes far less progress. In order to explore the factors which hinder the transformation of collective forest institution, this paper employs Williamson’s framework of Transaction Cost Economics, with the help of three analytical dimensions, namely asset specificity, uncertainty, and transaction frequency. On the side of those who buy the forest tenure, they hesitate to enter the forestry market because of the unchanging nature of forest land, frequent disastrous weather under the global warming, and the recession begotten by the slow-down of economic growth. On the side of those who mainly transfer the rights, the disincentives can ascribe to the peasants’ unchangeable occupational skills, backward agricultural machinery technology, counterproductive subsidy policy, and high rewards on breaching contracts. In the process of transition from the trilateral governance structure to the bilateral governance structure, the factors from two sides not only increase asset specificity as well as uncertainty, but also fail to raise exchange frequency, which eventually results in an unfavorable state of high transaction costs. So as to promote the ongoing reform, a series of measures aiming to reduce transaction costs should be thoroughly considered.